Eight Years for a USA Player, and the Teammate Who Said No
An ICC tribunal has banned Akhilesh Reddy for eight years over the 2025 Abu Dhabi T10. The detail worth reading is not the sentence. It is that the case exists at all because a player he approached refused, and reported it the same day.
An ICC anti-corruption tribunal has found the United States player Akhilesh Reddy guilty of multiple breaches of the anti-corruption code and banned him for eight years. The suspension is backdated to 21 November 2025.
What he was found to have done
Three findings, and they escalate. The tribunal found that Reddy, who is 26, attempted to influence the conduct of matches; that he encouraged another player to take part in corrupt activity; and that he obstructed the investigation by deleting messages and call logs from his phone.
The last of those matters more than it might appear. Investigations of this kind usually turn on what a phone remembers, and deleting the record is treated as its own offence precisely because it so often works.
The approach
The case dates to 19 November 2025, before a match in the Abu Dhabi T10. Reddy approached a teammate, named in the ruling only as Player A, and asked him to "give runs" while bowling.
The teammate refused and reported the approach to the ICC's anti-corruption unit. He was then left out of the playing eleven.
The part that deserves the headline
Read the sequence again, because it is the whole story. A player was asked to fix. He said no. He reported it immediately. He lost his place in the side.
Anti-corruption codes across sport depend on exactly that decision being made by people with far more to lose than to gain by making it. There is no clever detection system underneath this case. There is a cricketer who was put in an ugly position and did the right thing at a personal cost, and a tribunal that took him seriously.
Eight years is close to a career for a 26 year old. It is meant to be.