The International Cricket Council (ICC) has banned Oman's Yousuf Abdulrahim Al Balushi for seven years for indulging in corrupt practice during the 2019 T20 World Cup Qualifier, played in the UAE last month. In January, ICC's anti-corruption unit (ACU) had filed the charges after finding Yousuf guilty on four counts including match-fixing. In a media release on Monday, ICC said that Yousuf accepted four charges of breaching the ICC Anti-Corruption Code.
"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," ICC General Manager, Integrity, Alex Marshall said.
The Codes which Yousuf breached were:
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 in the ICC World T20 Qualifiers 2019.
Article 2.1.4: Attempting to solicit, induce, entice, persuade, encourage or intentionally facilitate a participant to breach Article 2.1.
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.
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.
Yousuf has not been an active player for Oman for a few years after being named among the reserves for the 2016 T20 World Cup.