Shakib Al Hasan has revealed that he should have been smart enough to inform the ICC Anti Corruption officials about the approaches he received from the bookies and added that he regrets the decision. Shakib has also added that he didn’t realise if he was doing any mistake by not reporting it.
Shakib Al Hasan was slapped with a two-year ban, one of them was suspicion, for failing to report the several approaches during the 2018 tri-series in Bangladesh and during the same edition of the Indian Premier League. The ICC Anti Corruption Unit (ACU) found that for which they interrogated the talismanic Bangladeshi, who admitted of not reporting the same. Speaking on that chapter of his life, the former Bangladesh captain stated that he regrets his own doing and should have kept the ICC ACU in the loop.
"I took the approaches too casually. When I met the anti-corruption guy and told them and they knew everything. Gave them all the evidence and they knew everything that happened... To be honest, that's the only reason I was banned for a year, otherwise I'd have been banned for five or 10 years," Shakib told Harsha Bhogle on Cricbuzz in Conversation.
"But I think that was a silly mistake I made. Because with my experience and the amount of international matches I've played and the amount of ICC's anti-corruption code of conduct classes I took, I shouldn't have made that decision [to not report], to be honest. I regret that. And I think no one should take such messages or calls (from bookies) lightly or leave it away... We must inform the ICC ACSU guy to be on the safe side and that's the lesson I learnt, and I think I learnt a big lesson," he added.
ICC's ACU had interviewed Shakib twice - on January 23, 2019, and then on August 27, 2019 - in which Shakib got to know that the governing body had all prior information. Shakib stated that it never came to his mind that he was doing something wrong. But he promises to emerge stronger from this episode and repay all the faith given by his fans.
"Because you do most things right in your life, you tend to get arrogant with some decisions. You may not realise but you're doing wrong by the books. It never came to my mind that I am doing something wrong [by not reporting the bookie approach immediately], it was just a feeling of 'okay, what's going to happen, leave it' and I continued with my life. But that's the mistake I made. And that happens," the 33-year-old said.
"This time and this situation taught me things completely differently. Previously I was playing for the country, for myself, for my family. But, now what I only think is what I can do to give back to the people who have been supporting me for 12-15 years and are now disappointed with what I did, and how can I repay them. Now that's the only mentality I have."
In 2015, Shakib became the first and only cricketer in history to be ranked the 'No.1 all-rounder' by ICC in its Player Rankings in all three formats of the game . He is currently ranked no.1 in odis and no.2 in tests and t-20s. On 13 January 2017, he registered the highest individual score (217) by a Bangladeshi batsman in Tests. In November 2018, he became the first bowler for Bangladesh to take 200 wickets in Tests. In June 2019, Shakib became the fastest player to score 6,000 runs and take 250 wickets in ODIs in just 199 matches. He is the highest run-scorer as well as the highest wicket-taker for Bangladesh in ICC ODI World Cups. He is also the only cricketer to score 1000 runs and to take 30 wickets in the World Cup. At the 2019 Cricket World Cup,
On 29 October 2019, the International Cricket Council (ICC) banned Shakib from all cricket for two years, with one year suspended, after breaching the ICC's Anti-Corruption Code.
Cover Credits: ICC-Cricket
