Umar Akmal's Ban Halved From Three Years To 1.5 Years

Controversial Pakistan batsman Umar Akmal’s sentence has been reduced from three to 1.5 years by an independent adjudicator of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Wednesday. The ban was imposed on the batsman earlier this year after he was found guilty of violating PCB’s Anti-Corruption Code.

The right-handed batsman attended the hearing in person to hear his judgement. With the ban now halved, Umar Akmal will remain suspended effectively from February 2020 till August 2021.

Earlier this year in April, he was banned from all representative cricket after he failed to report details of corrupt approaches made to him ahead of this year’s PSL. At that time, he had accepted that the incidents which formed the basis of the two charges pressed against him by the PCB had taken place.

At the same time, he had pointed out that the circumstances were such that they did not merit reporting to the board. Each charge carried a three-year ban which were running concurrently. He was banned from playing in this year’s PSL too.

A month after being banned, Umar Akmal filed an official appeal against the ban, challenging the length of the sanction and hoping to get it reduced. He had stated that players with similar offence in the past were handed far lighter sanctions, with Mohammad Irfan banned in 2017 for six months, and Mohammad Nawaz given a two-month ban.

Later, it had emerged that he had been handed the stiffer-than-expected penalty for failing to show sufficient remorse. Umar Akmal will now be hoping that his once-promising career which has been marred by controversies gets back on track once the ban ends.

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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