Match-fixing and corruption: the official decisions.

This page records corruption cases in cricket only as the decisions of governing bodies, tribunals, commissions and courts recorded them: who decided, when, and what sanction followed. Where a later court or body lifted or reduced a sanction, that is recorded too, with its date.

How this page is written

Decisions only. Each entry is a decision by a governing body, tribunal, commission or court, with the body, the date and the sanction. Allegations, unproven claims, charges not yet decided and the evidence of witnesses are left out.
Later rulings included. Where a court or body later lifted, set aside or reduced a sanction, that ruling is given with its date.
No money. No sums of any kind appear, and the ICC Code of Conduct fines are not covered.
Sources named. Several decisions are known to us only through press reports of them, because the orders themselves were not available; the page says so each time.

The ICC's response, 1999 and 2000

The ICC's history says that after match-fixing and betting by players and officials featured in the media, it set up a Code of Conduct Commission under Lord Griffiths in April 1999, followed by an Anti-Corruption Unit under Sir Paul Condon, a former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. The ICC's integrity page dates the Anti-Corruption Unit to 2000 and says its work rests on prevention, investigation, disruption and prosecution.

The decisions of 2000

South Africa: the United Cricket Board and Hansie Cronje

The general council of the United Cricket Board of South Africa passed a resolution banning the former captain Hansie Cronje for life from all cricket activities of the board and its affiliates. It was announced on 12 October 2000, AAP reported, and AAP said the ban rested on what Cronje himself had admitted to the King Commission in June 2000.

The date of the resolution is reported three ways. AAP says it was passed on the Tuesday before the 12 October announcement; ESPNcricinfo dates its report of the ban 11 October 2000; a Mail and Guardian piece, seen only as a search summary, places the resolution in November 2000. Press reports from 2001 say Cronje challenged the ban in the Pretoria High Court; we could not confirm the outcome from a court record, so it is not given here.

India: the BCCI and a later High Court ruling

According to press reports, the BCCI banned Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma for life on 5 December 2000, after an inquiry by a commissioner it had appointed, K. Madhavan, a retired officer of the Central Bureau of Investigation; the ban date is from Daily FT (10 November 2012). We did not read the BCCI's order.

In November 2012 a division bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court declared the BCCI's life ban on Azharuddin illegal, setting aside a City Civil Court order of 2003 that had upheld it, Daily FT reported. ESPNcricinfo's report of the ruling is dated 8 November 2012; another source gives 6 November. We found no report of what happened to Ajay Sharma's ban.

Pakistan: the Qayyum commission and a later court ruling

Dawn (24 October 2008) records that a judicial commission headed by Malik Mohammad Qayyum, a retired judge of the Lahore High Court, recommended a life ban for Salim Malik in 2000, and that the Pakistan Cricket Board accepted the commission's recommendations and imposed the ban. On 23 October 2008 a civil court in Lahore, Judge Malik Mohammad Altaf presiding, lifted the ban, ruling that the commission had no authority to impose one; the Supreme Court had referred Malik's petition to that court.

The Lord's Test case, 2010 to 2013

An ICC Anti-Corruption Tribunal sitting in Doha ruled on 5 February 2011 that Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir had committed offences under the ICC Anti-Corruption Code relating to spot-fixing in the Lord's Test against England in August 2010. The ICC records the sanctions as:

Salman Butt: a ten-year ban, five years of it suspended.
Mohammad Asif: a ban of at least five years, in the ICC's 2013 wording. Press reports of the tribunal, seen as search summaries, describe it as seven years with two suspended; the two describe the same sanction in different terms.
Mohammad Amir: a ban of at least five years.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed the appeals of Butt and Asif in April 2013; Amir did not appeal to the court. The ICC also records that a London Crown Court, in separate proceedings, sentenced the three players to prison terms for corruption and cheating. The judiciary's published sentencing remarks, by Mr Justice Cooke at Southwark Crown Court, are dated 3 November 2011.

The 2013 IPL bans and the rulings that followed

Every step in this case is known to us from press reports; none of the orders was read, so each date below is unconfirmed against the order itself.

2013: the BCCI's disciplinary committee banned S. Sreesanth and Ankeet Chavan of Rajasthan Royals for life over spot-fixing in the 2013 IPL. The BCCI ombudsman later treated Sreesanth's ban as running from 13 September 2013.
15 March 2019: the Supreme Court of India set aside the disciplinary committee's order against Sreesanth and asked the BCCI to reconsider the length of the sanction.
7 August 2019: the BCCI ombudsman, D.K. Jain, reduced Sreesanth's ban to seven years from 13 September 2013.

When the reduced ban ended is reported two ways: ESPNcricinfo gives 13 September 2020, and several Indian outlets said August 2020. Our research did not cover any later ruling on Chavan's ban.

Later ICC Anti-Corruption Code decisions

29 October 2019: the ICC banned Shakib Al Hasan from all cricket for two years, one of them suspended, after he accepted three charges under Article 2.4.4 of the Code, failing to report corrupt approaches, concerning a tri-series in January 2018 and the 2018 IPL. He accepted the sanction rather than go to a tribunal.
2 May 2025: the ICC banned Bangladesh's Shohaly Akhter from all cricket for five years after she admitted five breaches of the Code relating to the 2023 Women's T20 World Cup. The ICC described her as the first female cricketer banned on corruption charges.

The ICC also publishes a list of Anti-Corruption Unit charges and decisions; the version we saw was dated 11 October 2022 and included decisions from 2016 to 2022 against players and officials from several countries. We did not read the individual decision documents, so their sanctions are not summarised here, and the people the list shows as charged but not yet decided are left out because a charge is not a finding.

The ICC's wider history is on the ICC through the years, and the dates on this page are in the timeline.

Sources