The International Cricket Council has announced the retirement of ICC Anti-Corruption Unit Chair Ronnie Flanagan at the end of October 2024.
Flanagan has held the position since May 2010 after replacing Lord Condon has provided invaluable leadership and overseen the duties to protect the sport against corruption.
The ICC is in search of a perfect successor to Flanagan and a recommendation will be put forward at the October Board meetings.
It was Condon who had originally set up the ACU after being appointed in 2000 with the task of eliminating match-fixing around the time, resulting in life bans for three international captains Mohammad Azharuddin, Saleem Malik, and the late Hansie Cronje.
His retirement comes after the ACU head Alex Marshall decided to retire in November. As he was nearing his exit Condon had warned that T20 cricket, especially domestic franchise cricket, “represented the biggest challenge to the integrity of cricket”.
Flanagan told the heads of all the cricket boards to adopt stronger anti-corruption laws to prosecute players, match officials and franchise owners found guilty of corrupt practices in T20 leagues to avoid a repeat.
Meanwhile, the Outgoing International Cricket Council Anti-corruption Unit chief Alex Marshall has said that the corruption in t20 league still looms.
“I am confident that the cricket you watch is safe and clean,” said Marshall. “But I am also absolutely sure that corruptors are constantly looking for a route into the game, particularly in badly run lower-level franchise leagues. The threat to the game is corruptors won’t go away while there is always money to be made and they will look for weakness in the system to get in,” said Alex Marshall.
“I am proud of the significant increase in trust from players who now report approaches to us frequently whereas there was a time when they lacked confidence in confidentiality and the action that will be taken,” Marshall said.
“They have now seen corruptors being disrupted, named, and banned when they get involved in cricket. And the education we now do with players shows them who the corruptors are, what their methods are, so everyone is much better equipped and protected to keep corruption away from the game,” said ICC ACU head Alex Marshall.
