Sri Lanakan batting legend Sanath Jayasuriya banned over anti-corruption breach

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Sri Lankan batting legend and cricketing great Sanath Jayasuriya has been banned for 2-years by the International Cricket Council for destroying evidence. He breached two-counts of ICC’s anti-corruption code.

Jayasuriya admitted to destroying the phone which was asked by the ICC while they were doing an investigation and he had also earlier refused to cooperate with the Anti-Corruption Unit.

This conviction under the Code demonstrates the importance of participants in cricket cooperating with investigations,” said Alex Marshall, ICC General Manager of the Anti-Corruption Unit in a statement.

Compelling participants to cooperate under the Code is a vital weapon in our efforts to rid our sport of corruptors. These rules are essential to maintaining the integrity of our sport.

As a result of the admissions, he has accepted a sanction of a two-year period of ineligibility,” the ICC stated.

However, Jayasuriya wasn’t subjected to five-years of maximum sentence after the ICC took his previous good conduct into account.

Meanwhile, Jayasuriya has clarified his stance on the ban by ICC and said that the decision was unfortunate and claimed that ICC has no evidence of “corruption, betting or misuse of inside information” against him.

Ex-Sri Lankan captain Mahela Jayawardene was unhappy with the recent development and said that it was a sad day for Sri Lankan cricket. He also questioned on Twitter as to why Jayasuriya doesn’t cooperate with ICC and expressed the need to protect cricket from the corrupt.

Jayasuriya is considered by many as one of the greatest cricketers in the world, over the span of his illustrious career, he played 110 Tests, scoring 6,973 runs with 14 hundred before his retirement from Test cricket in 2007.

In the ODI’s, Sanath Jayasuriya scored 13,430 runs in 445 one-day internationals.

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