BCB Integrity chief meets CID to finalize anti-corruption strategy for BPL 2025-26

Alex Marshall, the independent chair of the BCB's newly formed Integrity Unit, sat with chief of Criminal Investigation Department Sibgat Ullah on Sunday to discuss their course of action in the upcoming Bangladesh Premier League, country's lone franchise-based T20 tournament, scheduled to start from December 24.

Match-fixing is not a new phenomenon in the BPL, considering that the league has often been entangled in controversies, with instances of spot-fixing and match-fixing coming to light since its inception in 2012.

Former Bangladesh skipper Mohammad Ashraful was subsequently banned for eight years (three years suspended) by the BPL anti-corruption tribunal for match and spot-fixing in the 2013 edition, while the BCB had to postpone the 2014 edition of the BPL.

In the recent past BCB appointed former ICC head of global cricket's Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) Marshall as a consultant for one year to oversee the board's own ACU operations and later made him chairman of the BCB integrity Unit.

Marshall hogged the spotlight after keeping nine cricketers out of the BPL auction that was based on a 900-page report submitted by a three-member investigation committee which was formed following huge-scale match-fixing allegation in the last edition of BPL.

Marshal insisted that he would leave no stone unturned to make this BPL corruption-free and according to Sibgat Ullah he made the visit along with several other BCB officials as part of his part of his pledge.

"Yes, we sat with the entire BCB team. Their legal people were there as well-all of us together. This is a continuous process. We are working with them. Our CID officials who are with the CPC (Cyber Police Centre), we are working on these issues a bit," Sibgat Ullah told Cricbuzz on Sunday (December 21).

"I won't go into the details, but there are some international norms and some protocols. We are trying to follow those. He is actually from the ICC side, right? By exchanging views with our CPC cyber policing officers, we are looking at what level we are at, where we want to go, what grey areas exist here, and what the gaps and lapses are-we are trying to frame this," he said.

"And our intention is to bridge those things so that our cricket, which is a place of emotion and love, remains somewhat pure so that there is no kind of black stain on it. With this objective, the CID is working with Alex and with the BCB," he added.