Five international captains approached by bookies in last one year: Alex Marshall

Yesterday, Mohammad Shahzad, the swashbuckling top order batsman from Afghanistan, made a startling elevation that he was approached by bookies to underperform in the inaugural edition of the Afghanistan Premier League (APL). He will play for the Paktia franchise in the upcoming T20 event. Recently, the International Cricket Council (ICC) also put forth some developments surrounding the issue.

Alex Marshall, the world’s apex cricket board’s anti-corruption unit general manager Alex Marshall mentioned that as many as five captains were approached for spot-fixing matters in the last one year out of which four were from ICC’s full-member nations. However, he refrained from naming them.

“We can’t give out the names. But there have been five international captains who reported suspicious approaches,” Marshall was quoted as saying in Times Now.

In the meantime, Marshall also mentioned that the bookies operate from across the globe. “That doesn’t mean they operate out of India. They are all over the world. And they love T20 cricket as it is easier for them to spot-fix little periods of the game,” he remarked.

My point was about the explosion of private T20 events

Talking about Shahzad’s case, Marshall iterated: “The incident was more to do with the upcoming Afghanistan Premier League. No official complaint was made but the ICC ACU was alerted that Shahzad was uncomfortable with some people trying to approach him in the team hotel.”

There are a number of T20 tournaments going around in the world and the ICC has conducted a total of 32 investigations in the last one year out of which 23 incidents were raised by either the players or the match officials.

“My point was about the explosion of private T20 events including some of the private events designed for the whole purpose of corruption. They do think it’s an interesting format. We never launch an investigation because something looks odd on the field or we get a single anonymous report.

We get quite a lot of single, anonymous reports. We start putting the pieces together and if there’s sufficient reason to think on reasonable grounds to start investigating this, then we take it on,” he concluded.

The cash-rich Indian Premier League (IPL) has also been a witness to some controversies ever since the inaugural edition back in 2008. Teams like Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals were slapped with two-year bans. International cricketers like S Sreesanth was one of the players whose career came to a halt after being caught in the 2013 scandal.

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