On April 29, the International Cricket Council slapped a two-year ban on Deepak Aggarwal, one of the owners of the ‘Sindhis’ franchise in the 2018 T10 league which was played in the United Arab Emirates. Six months out of these two years were suspended.
As per the ICC statement, Aggarwal was charged for “obstructing or delaying an investigation, including concealing, tampering with or destroying any documentation or other information that may be relevant to that investigation and/or that may be evidence of or may lead to the discovery of evidence of corrupt conduct under the ICC Anti-Corruption Code. Under the provisions of the Code, Mr Aggarwal chose to admit to the charges and agreed to the sanction with the ICC in lieu of an Anti-Corruption Tribunal hearing. Subject to his satisfying conditions in respect of the suspended part of the sanction, he will be free to resume his involvement in the game on 27 October 2021.”
Interestingly, Aggarwal’s name had also come up in the investigations related to approaches made to former Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan in 2017-18 during the course of the Bangladesh Premier League, a tri-series involving Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, and the 2018 edition of the Indian Premier League when Hasan was part of the Sunrisers Hyderabad team. This led to subsequent investigation by ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) wherein Hasan admitted to being approached by Aggarwal. Hasan was subsequently banned for two years after admitting to three separate breaches of the ICC Code of Conduct on October 29, of which 12 months is a suspended sentence.
The ACU and the Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) have kept an eye on him and his activities over the last few years. As per investigators, Aggarwal is an Indian businessman in his mid-forties based in NCR. He originally hails from Sonepat, Haryana. He reportedly owns a cricket academy named Cricplex in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, and “appears to have a lot of money” is how one investigator described him. While his other businesses are not known, investigators say “he has multiple interests as he tends to go a lot to Dubai also”. Many kids from the Delhi-NCR area are enrolled at the academy with a couple of players from the academy also playing in the DDCA league.
The T10 cricket league has distanced itself from Aggarwal with the management of the league saying he was removed as co-owner of the Sindhis team (later renamed as Deccan Gladiators) based on ICC’s advice before the 2018 season started. In a press release, the T10 league organisers, T-Ten Sports management stated, “We wish to clarify that Deepak Aggarwal was initially proposed as one of the owners for Team Sindhis for the 2018 season. As part of our standard operating procedure, and our close cooperation with ICC, we always seek the clearance of all team owners from the ICC anti-corruption unit. The clearance from ICC was not granted and we promptly took action to remove Deepak Agarwal from the ownership of the team before the start of the league.”
The T10 league also has the backing and recognition of the UAE Cricket Board. As for Agarwal, he does not seem to have any direct link with any Indian or Dubai based international bookie cartel. “We have kept tabs on him. It does not appear so,” said one senior investigator. “He has an accomplice as was evident from the Shakib investigations, but doesn’t appear to be linked to any top Indian bookie cartel or foreign one.” Aggarwal is, however, a free bird as there is no case registered against him anywhere.
As per details shared by the ICC in the T10 case, “Between 22 and 25 December 2018, Mr Aggarwal engaged in WhatsApp conversations with Mr X, another participant under the code who Mr Aggarwal had been in conversation with over the course of the previous year and who had also been called to an ACU interview in connection with an ongoing ACU investigation which also involved Mr Aggarwal. These WhatsApp conversations between Mr X and Mr Aggarwal related to what Mr Aggarwal had told the ACU in his interviews. In these conversations, Mr Aggarwal effectively instructed Mr X as to what to say to the ACU over certain matters to ensure that they both told the same story. In effect, Mr Aggarwal and Mr X contrived together to mislead the ACU investigation and not to tell the truth in their answers.” For the record, the ICC ACU is yet to reveal who “Mr X” is.
However, in Shakib’s case, the alleged approaches and moves made by Aggarwal are far more brazen and damning. The former Bangladesh skipper was interviewed by the ACU in Bangladesh on 23 January 2019 and 27 August 2019 in relation to the ongoing investigation into potential corrupt conduct under the Code. As per details shared by ICC on its website, “Mr Al Hasan admitted various failures to report approaches made to him to provide Inside Information to Mr Aggarwal.”
During the course of multiple interviews with ACU, Shakib Al Hasan confirmed that in November 2017, as a member of the Dhaka Dynamites team in the Bangladesh Premier League, his telephone number had been provided to Aggarwal by another person who was known to him. Then in January 2018, he was selected as part of the Bangladesh team participating in a tri-series between Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. During this series, he and Mr Aggarwal engaged in further WhatsApp conversations. On 19 January 2018, he received a WhatsApp message from Mr Aggarwal congratulating him for being named man of the match in that day’s game. Mr Aggarwal followed this message with a message saying “do we work in this or I wait till the IPL”. The reference to “work” in this message was allegedly a reference to Shakib providing inside information to Aggarwal on the tri-series. Shakib failed to report this approach to ACU.
On 26 April 2018, Shakib was playing for the Sunrisers Hyderabad team in its IPL match against Kings XI Punjab. He received a WhatsApp message from Mr Aggarwal that day asking him whether a particular player was going to be playing in the game that day, i.e. again asking for inside information. Mr Aggarwal continued this conversation with him by talking about bitcoins, dollar accounts and asked him for his dollar account details. During this conversation, he told Mr Aggarwal that he wanted to meet him “first”. These messages on 26 April 2018 included a number of deleted messages. Shakib Al Hasan confirmed that these deleted messages contained requests from Mr Aggarwal for inside information.
