Oman's Yousuf Abdulrahim Al Balushi banned from cricket for 7 years over match-fixing charges

Image Credits: Twitter/@ICC

Oman player Yousuf Abdulrahim Al Balushi has been banned from all forms of cricket for seven years after he accepted four charges of breaching the International Cricket Council (ICC) Anti-Corruption Code.

The charges, which are all related to the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifiers 2019 held in the United Arab Emirates, are as follows:

Breach of Article 2.1.1 – being party to an agreement or effort to fix or contrive in any way the result, progress, conduct or any other aspect of matches.

Breach of Article 2.1.4 – Attempting to solicit, induce, entice, persuade, encourage or intentionally facilitate a Participant to breach Article 2.1.

Breach of Article 2.4.4 – failing to report the approaches or invitations that you received from three different individuals to be a party to an agreement or effort to fix matches in the ICC World T20 Qualifiers 2019.

Breach of Article 2.4.7 - Obstructing or delaying an investigation carried out by the ACU in relation to possible Corrupt Conduct under the Code, including by concealing or tampering with information that may be relevant to that investigation and/or that may be evidence of or lead to the discovery of evidence of Corrupt Conduct under the Code.

Under the provisions of the Code, Al Balushi chose to admit the charges and agreed the sanction with the ICC in lieu of an Anti-Corruption Tribunal hearing, the ICC official website reported.

Reflecting on the Oman player's suspension, ICC General Manager, Integrity, Alex Marshall said, “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.

“Without Balushi’s admission of guilt and full cooperation throughout our investigation, the ban could have been significantly longer. The player has also indicated that he is willing to contribute to future integrity education programmes on our behalf to help younger players learn from his mistakes," he concluded.