Revealed: The WhatsApp Chat Details Between Shakib Al Hasan And The Bookie

The International Cricket Council (ICC), on Tuesday, slapped a lengthy ban on Bangladesh ace Shakib Al Hasan for his failure to report approaches from a bookie. The ICC banned Shakib Al Hasan for two years from all cricket with a year of suspended sentence. The former Bangladesh Test and T20I captain accepted all three charges of breaching the ICC Anti-Corruption Code.

In order to avoid the one-year suspended sentence coming into effect, Shakib must not commit any offence under the Anti-Corruption Unit code during the initial one-year suspension. He will also have to participate regularly in anti-corruption education and/or rehabilitation programmes.

The ICC also revealed the details of the WhatsApp chat between the bookie named Deepak Aggarwal and how the corruptor approached the Bangladesh ace. Aggarwal tried to convince Shakib Al Hasan to reveal information about his team during international games as well as Indian Premier League games.

Here are all the instances along with the details of the WhatsApp chat:

November 2017

The first time Aggarwal got in touch with Shakib Al Hasan was in November 2017 during the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), where he was playing for Dhaka Dynamites. Aggarwal got the allrounder’s phone number from a person who was close to the player. From this point onward, Aggarwal continuously tried to persuade the player for information.

January 2018:

Bangladesh hosted an ODI tri-series with Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. On January 19, Bangladesh beat Sri Lanka and Shakib was Man of the Match. Aggarwal was quick to contact the southpaw as he congratulated him before sending a cryptic message that read: “Do we work in this or I wait til the IPL”. This is the sentence that made the ICC ACU doubt the person.  “The reference to “work” in this message was a reference to him [Shakib] providing Inside Information to Mr Aggarwal.”

Shakib Al Hasan, on his part, did not report this approach either to the ACU, or to any other relevant authority.

Four days later, Aggarwal sent another message and this time around, he was clear with his motive as he wrote: “Bro anything in this series?”.

Once again the allrounder decided against approaching the authorities.

April 2018

On April 26, during IPL 2018, Shakib’s team Sunrisers Hyderabad were playing a home match against Kings XI Punjab. Aggarwal messaged Shakib on the day of the match, and it was during this conversation that Shakib eventually said he wanted to meet Aggarwal.

“He received a WhatsApp message from Mr Aggarwal that day asking him whether a particular player was going to be playing in the game that day, i.e. again asking for Inside Information,” the ICC statement said.

“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”.”

From this point onward, Shakib became worried but still did not report the approach to the authorities.

“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,” the ICC statement said.

Shakib Al Hasan, in his defence, said that he did not approach the ICC or even the Bangladesh Cricket Board because he did not accept the requests of the bookie.