The International Cricket Council (ICC), after banning Bangladesh star cricketer Shakib Al Hasan two years over failure to report corruption, has released the details of the chat between the all-rounder and the bookie who approached him.
Shakib had admitted his failure to report corrupt approaches made to him by a bookie Deepak Aggarwal. The ICC has now made the WhatsApp conversations between the cricketer and Aggarwal public. In a seven-page report, it is mentioned that Shakib admitted to the ICC Anti Corruption Unit that he failed to “report approaches made to him to provide Inside Information” to the bookie.
The 32-year-old cricketer had received various WhatsApp messages from the bookie in which “Mr Aggarwal sought to meet him”. The report says that Shakib started receiving messages since November 2017 when he was part of the Dhaka Dynamites in the Bangladesh Premier League. It adds that the conversations continued in January 2018 when the Bangladesh team played in the tri-series with Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.
Th report reads: ‘On 19 January 2018, he received a WhatsApp message from Mr Aggarwal congratulating him for being named man of the match in that day’s game. Mr Aggarwal followed this message with a message saying “do we work in this or I wait til the IPL”.’
‘The reference to “work” in this message was a reference to him providing Inside Information to Mr Aggarwal,’ the report adds.
‘On 23 January 2018, he received another WhatsApp message from Mr Aggarwal in which Mr Aggarwal made another approach to him to provide him with Inside Information, saying “Bro anything in this series?”’―where Aggarwal asked him for inside information during the tri-series.
‘On 26 April 2018, he played for the Sunrisers Hyderabad team in its IPL match against Kings XI Punjab... He received a WhatsApp message from Mr Aggarwal that day asking him whether a particular player was going to be playing in the game that day, i.e. again asking for Inside Information.’
The report states that Aggarwal talked about bitcoins, dollar accounts, also asking Shakib to give his dollar account details, and added that he wanted to meet first. It goes on to say that Shakib had felt “dodgy” and “had the feeling that Mr Aggarwal was a bookie”.
Several messages were deleted from the chat, Shakib said as it pertained to Aggarwal asking for inside information. Shakib did not report to the ACU regarding the bookie's approach in any of these instances.
Shakib had recently led a strike with Bangladesh cricket players, demanding a hike in pay, accusing the Bangladesh Cricket Board of not sharing its wealth. The strike was called off on October 23 after the BCB accepted their demands.
Bangladesh begin their India tour from November 3, 2019 and will play three T20Is and two Test matches.
