DHAKA: Bangladeshi and international cricket authorities have jointly appealed against a reduced match ban for former captain Mohammad Ashraful for match-fixing, an official said on Wednesday.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) and the International Cricket Council (ICC) lodged the appeal this week after a ban imposed on the one-time prodigy was reduced from eight to five years, said BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury.

The appeal was lodged with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne.

“Our lawyers had been authorised to make a decision on the judgement, which reduced Ashraful’s original eight-year ban for match fixing. And they decided to lodge an appeal,” Chowdhury said.

The 30-year-old batsman was banned last year after he tearfully confessed on national television to helping fix matches in the scandal-tarnished Bangladesh Premier League.

The Twenty20 tournament was eventually suspended this year in the wake of the match-fixing controversy which also implicated two foreign players.

A local appeals panel late last month cut Ashraful’s ban to five years including a two-year suspended sentence, meaning he can return to competitive cricket from August 2016.

The BCB had 21 days to appeal against the judgement to the CAS, a deadline that expired on Monday.

Ashraful, Test cricket’s youngest century-maker, made his debut at the national level aged 17. He has played 61 Tests, 177 One-day Internationals and 23 Twenty20 International matches.

There was no immediate comment from the ICC on the appeal.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2014