ICC ACU officer Steve Richardson grilled Mansoor Akhtar for more than hour over alleged spot-fixing charges

The advent of a lot of T20 leagues across the world has helped Cricket globalize. But unfortunately, along with it, corruption has also increased multifold. Recently, during the Global T20 Canada, Umar Akmal reported an incident to the ICC and the tournament organizers about being approached to spot fix in one of the games in the competition.

Umar had accused the former Pakistan player Mansoor Akhtar of making a match-fixing offer to him during the tournament. Mansoor who has played in 19 Test and 49 ODIs for Pakistan was also the part of the management of one of the franchises. Though he has denied all the accusations made by the batsman of his nation.

Akmal who reported the issue to ICC and the organizers had forced the ICC Anti Corruption council officer Steve Richardson to make an unexpected appearance at the National Stadium on Friday but he didn’t make any comments in the media. There were strong speculations that Mansoor, who is currently based in the United States, apparently went underground after the strong accusations were made against him.

According to the Indian Express, Richardson interrogated Mansoor Akhtar for almost an hour over the matter but the details of the same are still awaited.  “We don’t know what took place in the meeting but the ICC officer had called Mansoor to the stadium and he spent over an hour with him,” the PCB source said. It is expected that Richardson will soon meet Umar Akmal as well in Lahore.

This is not the first time that Umar Akmal has been found tucked up in fixing matters. Before this incident, the 29-year-old Akmal had been questioned by PCB and ICC ACU officers after making claims that he was asked to under-perform during the 2015 World Cup and in a super sixes game in Hong Kong.

The sincerity and integrity of the cricketers have come into question in the past as well. In the last decade, there have been incidents where players like Mohammad Amir, Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif among others were found guilty in fixing.

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