Afghanistan wicket-keeper batsman Mohammad Shahzad recently reported to ICC that a spot-fixer approached him for the upcoming Afghan Premier T20 League from October 5-23.
Meanwhile, Shahzad reported to ICC’ anti-corruption unit about these developments. Furthermore, this prompted cricket’s parent body to keep a close eye on the Asia Cup matches.
Mohammad Shahzad is an integral part of the Afghanistan team. So far, he has played 75 ODIs, 65 T20s and the country’s only Test which they played against India in June.
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Recently, in an even ICC’s ACU chief Alex Marshall admitted that bookies had approached five international captains. Moreover, four of the five captains are from Test playing nations.
“There have been 32 investigations in the last 12 months, eight involve players as suspects. Five of them involve administrators or non-playing personnel. Three of these individuals have been charged. Five internationals captains have also reported receiving approaches to spot-fix,” said Marshall.
Marshall explained how they go about their job amid the ever-increasing risk of corruption in the game.
“We try to link up with the intelligence. We look at what we know about this event, are we providing anti-corruption cover, are we already there or is it being provided by another party? Are there any other strands of intelligence we have about that tournament. Is there anything about financial backers or the people surrounding the tournament are suspicious?
“We never launch off 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. ACU start putting the pieces together and there’s sufficient reason to think on reasonable grounds to start investigating this, then we take it on.
“We do find a lot of corrupters who move between formats of international and domestic because they’re looking for the opportunity and vulnerability,” Alex Marshall concluded.