PCB To Appeal Against Umar Akmal's Reduced Ban For Anti-corruption Breach

Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), on Monday, announced that it will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against the reduction of batsman Umar Akmal’s ban for an anti-corruption breach.

The PCB had banned the middle-order batsman in April for failing to report approaches to engage in corrupt practices before this year’s Pakistan Super League (PSL). After being provisionally suspended in February just before the PSL, the controversial batsman was banned by PCB’s disciplinary committee in April.

He was slapped with a three-year ban. But last month, an independent adjudicator halved Umar Akmal’s ban to 18 months, saying that the batsman’ confession that he failed to report match-fixing approaches on two occasions had left “no room for doubt as to the veracity of the charges”.

While announcing that it will challenge the ban reduction, the PCB stated that the decision to file an appeal was made following a review of the independent adjudicator’s order, which said the ban was reduced “on grounds of taking a compassionate view”.

“The PCB doesn’t take any pride in seeing a cricketer of Umar’s stature being banned for corruption, but as a credible and respectable institution, we need to send out a loud and clear message to all our stakeholders that there will be no sympathy whatsoever for anyone who breaches the regulations,” the board said in a statement.

Umar Akmal’s 18-month ban had been backdated to February 20 when he was provisionally suspended and the 30-year-old will be eligible to play from August 2021. The right-handed batsman has not played for Pakistan since the T20I series against Sri Lanka at home last year.

His career has been marred by a number of controversies. Before being banned, he was in the news for another controversy. He was alleged to have behaved inappropriately with a staff member at a failed fitness test. However, the PCB put the incident down to a “misunderstanding” after an inquiry. In September 2017, he copped a three-month ban for publicly criticising then Pakistan head coach Mickey Arthur.

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