A Harare official has been banned from all cricket activities for 20 years for offering Zimbabwe captain Graeme Cremer $30,000 to fix a match last year, the International Cricket Council (ICC) said on Tuesday.

Rajan Nayer, the treasurer and marketing director of Harare Metropolitan Cricket, accepted the charge of ‘directly soliciting, inducing, enticing or encouraging Cremer’ to fix an international match, the ICC said without identifying the game, reports zeenews.india.com.

‘I would like to place on record my thanks to Graeme Cremer, who has acted with the utmost professionalism throughout this process,’ Alex Marshall, general manager of the global governing body’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) said in a statement.  

‘Immediately after he received the approach from Nayer, he reported it to the ICC and we were able to get an investigation underway swiftly.’

Cremer credited the ICC for educating players on the perils of fixing.

‘I was appalled to be approached by someone so closely connected to the game and there was no doubt in my mind that I had to report it as soon as I could,’ the 31-year-old said.

‘We receive education around this which you never expect to have to use, but it certainly helped when it came to knowing what to do.’