ICC v. Praveen Jayawickrama

Sri Lankan left-arm spinner Praveen Jayawickrama was charged in August 2024 under two provisions of the ICC Anti-Corruption Code: Article 2.4.4, for failing to report without unnecessary delay an approach he had received to fix international and Lanka Premier League (LPL) matches, and Article 2.4.7, for obstructing or delaying the Anti-Corruption Unit's investigation into that approach by concealing, tampering with, or destroying relevant information. Reporting at the time described this as the deletion of messages relating to the approach. The underlying approach itself dated back to the 2021 LPL season.

The ICC's media release confirming the sanction, issued 2 October 2024, records Jayawickrama's admission specifically to Article 2.4.7 — obstruction of the investigation — without confirming any separate admission to the Article 2.4.4 failure-to-report charge he had also been charged with in August. As a result of the admission, he accepted a sanction of a one-year period of ineligibility, of which the last six months are suspended, with the ICC acting in agreement with Sri Lanka Cricket under Articles 1.7.4.1 and 1.8.1 of the Code.

The case illustrates a structural feature of the ICC's anti-corruption framework: obstructing or destroying evidence relevant to an investigation is a distinct, independently chargeable offence under Article 2.4.7, separate from both the underlying corrupt approach and the failure to report it. Because the ICC's own release confirms admission only to the obstruction charge, the one-year sanction — half of it suspended — reflects the consequence of impeding the inquiry itself, rather than a sanction for match-fixing or corrupt conduct directly, a materially different and lighter category of wrongdoing under the Code's sanctioning structure.