Oman player banned for 7 years

DUBAI: An Omani cricketer has been banned for seven years after admitting to corruption charges relating to qualifiers for the men’s Twenty20 World Cup.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) announced Monday that Yousuf Abdulrahim Al Balushi had accepted four charges of breaching the ICC AntiCorruption Code, including an attempt to solicit another player for match fixing, failing to report illegal match fixing approaches from three people and trying to obstruct an investigation by deleting evidence from his telephone. The ICC said the charges all related to the T20 qualifiers held in the UAE last year.

“This is a very serious offence where a player attempted but failed to get a teammate to engage in corrupt activity in high-profile games and this is reflected in the severity of the sentence,” said Alex Marshall, the ICC”S general manager for integrity.

An investigation found that

Balushi, who was playing in the Oman domestic competition at the time, was initially asked by a contact he knew from an unsanctioned tournament in Bahrain in 2017 to “do some work together” and to set up contact with three Oman players.

He did not facilitate the contact in that case, but didn’t report the approach to cricket integrity officials. He was later approached by two associates of the initial contact, and passed on a message to an Oman player who rejected the approach and reported it.