ZC, Pakistan Cricket strike deal

Zimbabwe CRICKET (ZC) have reached out to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to secure no objection certificates (NOCs) for Pakistani players selected to participate in the upcoming Zim Afro T10 tournament.

According to the PCB, they have given a positive indication, providing a green signal to ZC regarding the issuance of NOCs for Pakistani cricketers.

However, the final decision is still under consideration by the PCB, and they have assured that the matter will be reviewed thoroughly.

Notably, players participating in the Champions One Day Cup will not be granted NOCs for the Zim Afro T10 League.

Sources suggest that only those players not involved in the domestic tournament stand a chance to receive the required clearance.

A total of seven Pakistani cricketers, including Shahnawaz Dahani, Asif Ali, Sharjeel Khan, Haider Ali, Yasir Shah, Mohammad Irfan and Salman Irshad, have been selected to feature in the Zim Afro T10.

However, among these, Haider Ali, Mohammad Asif and Shahnawaz Dahani will actively play in the Champions One Day Cup.

As a result, they will not be eligible to receive NOCs for the competition scheduled for Harare Sports Club.

The fixtures for the second edition of the Zim Afro T10 tournament have been announced, with six teams set to compete for the top prize.

The tournament is scheduled for September 21-29 and preparations are already in full swing for the competition, whose games will be played in the afternoon and evenings.

Each day of the tournament will feature three matches, beginning at 3pm local time (6pm PST).

The second game of the day will be played at 5.15pm local time (8.45pm IST), and the third match is scheduled for 7.30pm local time (10.30pm PST).

The tournament will kick off with a grand opening ceremony on September 21 at 1pm local time, followed by the opening game between Durban Wolves and Jo’Burg Bangla Tigers.

The second match of the day will see Cape Town Samp Army take on Harare Bolts, while the final game of the day will feature Bulawayo Brave Jaguars against NYS Lagos.

The group stage will consist of 21 matches in total, with each team playing several games across the nine days. The top two teams will face off in Qualifier 1, with the winner going directly to the final.

The third and fourth-placed teams will play an Eliminator, and the winner will advance to Qualifier 2 to meet the loser of Qualifier 1. The winner of Qualifier 2 will then play in the final on September 29.

Nawab Shaji Ul Mulk, founder and chairman of T Ten Global Sports, expressed excitement about the tournament, saying: “Season two of the Zim Afro T10 is definitely going to be bigger and better’’.

Meanwhile, as he prepares to leave the ICC, Alex Marshall, the head of global cricket’s anti-corruption unit (ACU), has warned that “badly run” domestic T20 leagues “at lower level” remain a “threat” to the game, with corruptors looking to use them as an entry point.

Marshall, 63, has decided to retire from the ICC job this November, ending a seven-year term, which started in 2017 as general manager of the ICC’s integrity unit, which includes the security and anti-doping units apart from the ACU.

Marshall, a former senior police officer in the United Kingdom, recently communicated his decision to the ICC, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family, including parents and grandchildren in England.

Marshall, who replaced YP Singh, was the fourth ACU head and was shortlisted by Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the independent chairman of the anti-corruption watchdog.

Marshall said, while the malaise of corruption will continue to shadow cricket, he was “proud” that during his stint, the ACU had been successful in helping players be more forthcoming about approaches from corrupters.

“I am proud of the significant increase in trust from players who now report approaches to us frequently whereas there was a time when they lacked confidence in confidentiality and the action that will be taken,” Marshall told ESPNcricinfo on Friday.

“They have now seen corruptors being disrupted, named, banned when they get involved in cricket. And the education we now do with players shows them who the corruptors are, what their methods are, so everyone is much better equipped and protected to keep corruption away from the game.”

Immediately upon taking charge in September 2017, Marshall and his team investigated several people in Sri Lanka, a country where the ACU was busy at that point, conducting a number of probes concerning “various types of corrupt activities.”

That operation lasted several years during which the ACU met the top-most authorities of the Sri Lankan government, including the President and Prime Minister, to paint them a picture of corruption that had seeped into the country’s cricketing system.

Eventually, the ACU intervention paved the way for Sri Lanka becoming the first South Asian country to criminalise several offences related to match-fixing.

Marshall said he was happy with the progress in Sri Lanka, where he says there are now stronger guardrails to ward off corrupt elements.

“Sri Lanka turned out to be a good news story because there were serious issues which were addressed locally and with ICC,” he said.

“Now, with the legislation and stronger measures, Sri Lanka is in a much better place to keep the corruptors away.”

Another significant outcome of the ACU probe involved charging several Sri Lankan players under its own code, including sanctioning a two-year ban on former Sri Lanka captain Sanath Jayasuriya in 2019 for refusing to co-operate with investigations related to corruption in cricket.

Two other former international captains, Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan and Zimbabwe’s Heath Streak, who passed away last September, were charged by Marshall’s ACU for wrongdoing.

Both players accepted their offence.

In 2019, the ACU sanctioned Shakib across the three international formats for failing to report “not one but three” approaches made by alleged corruptor Deepak Aggarwal to engage in corrupt conduct in two tournaments in 2018: an ODI tri-series in Zimbabwe and an IPL match the same year when the Bangladesh player featured for Sunrisers Hyderabad.

In 2021, Streak was handed an eight-year ban by the ACU after admitting to five breaches of the ICC’s anti-corruption code, including accepting a payment in bitcoin from a potential corruptor.

As he prepares to leave his ICC job, Marshall has a word of caution for those administering, playing and governing cricket, that corrupt elements continue to wander around, waiting for any opportunity to enter the system.

And one of those routes, Marshall stressed, was “badly” managed T20 franchise leagues, which are outside the ambit of the ICC ACU and are instead monitored by the member country boards.

“I am confident that the cricket you watch is safe and clean,” Marshall said.

“But I am also absolutely sure that corruptors are constantly looking for a route into the game, particularly in badly-run lower-level franchise leagues.

“The threat to the game is that corruptors won’t go away while there is always money to be made and they will look for weakness in the system to get in.” — ESPNCricinfo/The Express Tribune