Shakib Al Hasan wanted his suspension before the India series

Shakib Al Hasan has been in the thick of things in the recent times. The Bangladesh all-rounder was handed a two-year suspension, one year of which already suspended, by the International Cricket Council (ICC). The southpaw breached the ICC’s Code of Conduct three times where he failed to inform the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) about three approaches made by bookie Deepak Aggarwal.

He accepted the charges and will now be working with the ACU team in their programme in order to ensure that others don’t commit the mistake he did. In the meantime, it has been learned that Shakib wanted the ban to be imposed before the tour of India, scheduled to start on November 3. The same was because he didn’t want the players to get affected in the middle of the tour.

Shakib himself said it

“We said it before, we knew nothing about this. Many people are wondering why it happened just before the India tour. They [ACSU] said to Shakib that the ban will be imposed after a few more days. If it didn’t happen now, then it could have happened in the middle of the India series. It would have affected the whole team and Shakib,” BCB director Akram Khan was quoted as saying in BDcrictime.

The backdated suspension has meant that Shakib’s chances of playing the T20 World Cup in Australia also look bleak. “Shakib himself said it. Apart from that, he would have also missed the 2020 T20 World Cup if the ban would have been imposed a little bit later. That hope is still at least hanging now,” Akram added.

The mega event is set to start on October 18 and Shakib’s ban ends on October 29, 2020. The BCB has earlier informed that they will try and reduce the ban by flowing some legal procedures. If it happens then Shakib might be playing the World Cup next year.

As far as the India series is concerned, Shakib was earlier named the skipper for the T20Is and Tests. But after his ban, even as Mahmudullah was given the role in the shortest format, Mominul Haque will be leading the Test side. The tour starts with the T20I series with the opening match at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi.

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