Judgment reserved on Umar Akmal's appeal against 3-year ban

The Pakistan Cricket Board has announced that an independent adjudicator has reserved judgement on Umar Akmal's appeal against his three-year ban.

Umar Akmal was provisionally suspended from this year's Pakistan Super League after failing to report corrupt approaches to the PCB. He was immediately separated from his franchise Quetta Gladiators, and couldn't feature in a single game.

The panel originally found Umar Akmal guilty of breaching Article 2.4.4 of the PCB Anti-Corruption Code in two separate incidents and complained that the cricketer was not co-operative. He was subsequently handed a three-year ban from all forms of cricket.

The PCB did not reveal when the reserved verdict will be made public in the online press release which provided the update on the matter:

“Former Supreme Court judge Mr. Justice (retd) Faqir Muhammad Khokhar, in his capacity as an independent adjudicator, reserved his order on Umar Akmal’s appeal after listening to the arguments of both sides today.”

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The hearing on Umar Akmal's ban was to be held on June 11 originally

Umar Akmal's hearing was previously scheduled for June 11 but was deferred due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The rescheduled hearing was held at the National High Performance Centre in Lahore as PCB mentioned in their previous press release.

This is not the first time that Umar Akmal has gotten himself engulfed in a controversy as his career has been marred with a series of scandals both on and off the field.

In 2010, he tried to feign an injury to skip a Test match and was subsequently handed a six-month suspension. In 2017, he got fined for questioning Junaid Khan's absence in a domestic match. He was also dropped after failing a fitness test before the 2017 Champions Trophy that Pakistan eventually won.

In another incident, Umar Akmal was handed a three-month ban after publicly criticizing Mickey Arthur's fitness policies. In early 2020, he faced charges of misconduct after misbehaving with a training official.

Umar Akmal last represented Pakistan in a T20I series against Sri Lanka in the latter half of 2019.