‘Shakib wanted to meet bookie first’

The International Cricket Council (ICC) banned Shakib Al Hasan from all cricket for two years, with one year of that suspended.

Though ICC did not find Shakib’s involvement in match fixing, the cricket governing body uncovered his eagerness to meet a bookmaker named Deepak Aggarwal.

According to ICC, in interviews with the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU), Shakib admitted that he was aware of his obligations under the Code, including, in particular, his obligation to report to the ACU any approaches or invitations he received to engage in Corrupt Conduct.

In the course of his interviews with the ACU he confirmed the following: 

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”.

Here, the reference to “work” in this message was a reference to him providing Inside Information to Mr Aggarwal.

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?”

Mr Aggarwal continued this conversation with him by talking about bitcoins, dollar accounts and asked him for his dollar account details. During this conversation, he told Mr Aggarwal that he wanted to meet him “first”.

These messages on 26 April 2018 included a number of deleted messages. He confirmed that these deleted messages contained requests from Mr Aggarwal for Inside Information.

He confirmed that he had concerns over Mr Aggarwal, feeling he was a bit “dodgy”, and that, following their conversations, he had the feeling that Mr Aggarwal was a bookie.

Dhaka/AKA