ICC Suspends Cricket Canada :
The International Cricket Council suspended Cricket Canada on Sunday. The vote, taken at a meeting in Ahmedabad, was unanimous — it froze the board’s funding and placed its finances under direct ICC oversight. The national teams, however, can still play. That’s the one piece of good news for a sport that has been bleeding credibility at the administrative level for years.
Immigration from South Asia and the Caribbean reshaped Canadian demographics — and cricket followed, growing faster over the last decade than almost any other sport in the country. Participation numbers are at record highs. And yet the organization tasked with growing the game is now under criminal investigation.
The match-fixing allegations
CBC’s Fifth Estate spent months reporting on this. What investigators found wasn’t opportunistic cheating. It was a pipeline: specific players steered toward the captaincy, then directed to throw particular moments within matches. One player told the program that those who refused to cooperate were threatened with death. The details are chilling: Today’s betting platforms don’t ask you to pick a winner — they let you bet on a single error, a batting lineup, the exact over when a wicket falls. and investigators believe some Canadian games were compromised.
The coercion and the fixing, the CBC reported, trace back to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang — a transnational crime syndicate run from a Delhi prison. In February, after Canada’s men’s captain made a clumsy error in a match against New Zealand, the ICC’s anti-corruption unit questioned him about possible fixing. That error, seen against the gang’s reach, no longer looks like a simple athletic lapse.
The Bishnoi gang’s footprint in Canada is already written in blood. Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist, was shot dead in Surrey, B.C. in 2023, a killing authorities have connected to the organization. Police suspect they ordered the 2022 murder of Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moose Wala, who had a big Canadian fanbase.
Cricket Canada suspended over allegations of gang-linked corruption
Ottawa lists the gang as a terrorist entity
Canada’s government recently designated the Bishnoi gang a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code. Public Safety Canada said the group uses murder, shootings, and arson to extort diaspora communities here. They also noted the gang’s alleged connections to the Indian government. That designation has teeth. Federal anti-terrorism financing laws make it a crime to provide financial or material support to a listed entity. The ICC’s financial controls are, in part, a recognition that Canadian cricket’s money can’t be allowed to bleed toward a designated terror group.
The RCMP hasn’t laid charges directly linking Cricket Canada officials to the gang, but its Federal Policing unit is actively investigating. It’s working with the ICC’s anti-corruption team and other international agencies.
Suspension with a safety net for players
The ICC said Cricket Canada failed to meet governance and financial-reporting standards. The board’s funding had already been frozen in May after it couldn’t produce audited financial statements and lacked basic governance systems. Bhavjit Jauhar, the new interim COO, called the suspension “unexpected” — a characterization that strained credulity given months of headlines — but said the organization won’t appeal. He promised an independent investigation. A former official told Fifth Estate the board has become “a laughing stock.” A growing number of players and clubs are demanding reform.
Canada’s men’s and women’s teams, including the under-19 sides, will still compete in ICC events, including this year’s T20 World Cup. Their funding will come through a controlled mechanism managed by the ICC. It’s a setup that protects athletes from the sins of their board.
The gang’s reach into the team
Multiple police and intelligence sources confirmed to Fifth Estate that Bishnoi gang members have tried to influence player selection and match outcomes. The ICC’s anti-corruption unit has been poking around the Canadian program for over a year now, interviewing players and reviewing betting irregularities. The idea that That a criminal syndicate running its operations from inside a Delhi prison managed to reach a national sports team on the other side of the world is, on its own, a remarkable and disturbing fact. tests Canada’s law enforcement in new ways. The RCMP’s involvement means this isn’t being treated as a sports spat. It’s national economic crime, with a whisper of national security.
What comes next
The ICC set out its demands: file audited financials. Adopt a governance framework that meets international standards. Set up an independent body to oversee integrity. That’s a lot of work for a board that couldn’t get its basic books done on time. No timeline has been set. An ICC spokesperson said reinstatement depends on meeting the conditions to the board’s satisfaction, and the matter will be reviewed at the next quarterly meetings.
The players’ association is urging both Cricket Canada and the ICC to speed up reform while keeping the path to competition open for athletes who’ve done nothing wrong. Many of these players spent years scrapping their way into international cricket. Now they wait. The men’s team has a T20 World Cup to prepare for. Whether the board that’s supposed to support them will be functional by then is anyone’s guess.