DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates – West In­dies in­ter­na­tion­al De­von Thomas was banned from the sport on Thurs­day for five years af­ter he ad­mit­ted to sev­en an­ti-cor­rup­tion breach­es.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC), the sport’s world or­gan­is­ing body, the 34-year-old An­tiguan wick­et­keep­er-bats­man and oc­ca­sion­al pace bowler ad­mit­ted to “breach­ing sev­en counts of the an­ti-cor­rup­tion codes of Sri Lan­ka Crick­et, the Emi­rates Crick­et Board, and the Caribbean Pre­mier League”.

The most se­ri­ous of­fence was re­lat­ed to “con­triv­ing or be­ing par­ty to at­tempts to fix the out­come of match­es” in the 2021 Lan­ka Pre­mier League (LPL) Twen­ty20 tour­na­ment.

Thomas al­so ad­mit­ted to sev­er­al charges of fail­ing to re­port il­le­gal ap­proach­es at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Ten10 tour­na­ment, and 2021 Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 to the au­thor­i­ties, and ob­struct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“This ban is apt and should send a strong mes­sage to play­ers and cor­rupters that at­tempts to cor­rupt our sport will be dealt with firm­ly,” Alex Mar­shall, ICC gen­er­al man­ag­er, In­tegri­ty Unit, said.

The ban will be back­dat­ed to May 23 last year when Thomas was pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pend­ed, and the fi­nal 18 months are sus­pend­ed, pend­ing his co­op­er­a­tion with wit­ness state­ments and tes­ti­mo­ny, if nec­es­sary, in an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and not com­mit­ting fur­ther of­fences.

Four of the breach­es re­late to match­es in the LPL, an­oth­er re­lates to match­es in the Abu Dhabi T10, and the oth­er two re­late to match­es in the CPL three years ago.

“Hav­ing played both in­ter­na­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al do­mes­tic/fran­chise crick­et, De­von at­tend­ed nu­mer­ous an­ti-cor­rup­tion ed­u­ca­tion ses­sions,” Mar­shall added.

“He, there­fore, knew what his oblig­a­tions were un­der the an­ti-cor­rup­tion codes, but failed to meet these oblig­a­tions across three dif­fer­ent fran­chise leagues.”

Thomas made his in­ter­na­tion­al de­but 15 years ago, and he has played 21 One-day In­ter­na­tion­als, the last of them 11 years ago in a check­ered ca­reer in which has al­so played 12 Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als and made on­ly one Test ap­pear­ance against Aus­tralia in De­cem­ber 2022.

(CMC)