Afghanistan's Shafiqullah Shafaq banned from cricket for six years

Afghanistan Cricket Board has banned wicketkeeper batsman Shafiqullah Shafaq from all forms of cricket for a period of six years for breaching their anti-corruption code.

In all, Shafaq faced four charges of corruption in the first edition of the Afghanistan Premier League in 2018 and the 2019 edition of the Bangladesh Premier League.

The charges on Shafaq include "fixing or contriving in any way or otherwise influencing improperly ... the result, progress, conduct or any other aspect of any domestic match", "seeking, accepting, offering or agreeing to accept any bribe", "attempting to solicit" and "failing to disclose to the designated anti-corruption official".

Shafaq accepted all four charges and the sanctions by the ACB.

Sayed Anwar Shah Quraishi, ACB's senior anti-corruption unit (ACU) manager, said: “This is a very serious offence where a senior national player is involved in corruption of a high-profile domestic game in APL T20 2018. The player had also attempted but failed to get one of his teammates to engage in corruption in another high-profile game during the BPL 2019.

“It is an alert for all those players who think their illegal activities concerning the game of cricket will not be disclosed to the ACB's ACU. Our coverage is bigger than what is perceived,” Quraishi added.

Quraishi pointed out if Shafaq had not confessed, the ban could have been even bigger. He added that Shafaq was willing to contribute to ACB's integrity education programmes to help younger players learn from his mistakes.

Wicketkeeper Shafaq, 30, has considerable experience at the highest level. Shafaq has played 24 ODIs and 46 T20 Internationals.