Legendary Sri Lankan batsman Sanath Jayasuriya, who admitted to breaching two counts of the ICC Anti-Corruption Code, has issued a statement explaining his admission to the ICC charges and the two-year ban imposed on him debarring him from engaging in all Cricket activities.

The statement said that the ‘purported findings’ of the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) of the ICC originated from an alleged failure on his part to cooperate with the ACU’s investigation ‘by not providing a sim card and iPhone immediately on demand to the ICC ACU Officials’.

The former Sri Lanka captain said that it is clear that there were no Corruption charges, Betting charges or Misuse of Inside Information charges (Article 2.1, Article 2.2 and Article 2.3) levelled against him under the Code.

Mr Jayasuriya says, upon receiving the ICC ACU’s Notice of Charge, he was left with two options; first is to deny the said charges, which could lead to a full hearing before an Anti-Corruption Tribunal constituted under the Code. The second option, he says, was to admit the charges in lieu of a hearing and face a sanction in the form of a period of ineligibility.

The circumstances which led to his alleged failure to provide the sim card and iPhone to the ICC ACU Officials immediately was ‘very personal in nature’, Mr Jayasuriya stated in his statement.

He says that, although he had submitted the sim card and the iPhone to the ICC ACU, his decision to admit the charges at the first instance was to protect the integrity of the Sport of Cricket.

“Having admitted the said charges, I voluntarily suspended myself until the Charges against me were determined from the date of Notice of Charge i.e. 15th of October 2018,” the statement further read.

Mr Jayasuriya says the ICC ACU’s decision to charge him under the Code is unfortunate, despite him providing all the information as demanded by the officials.

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