Pakistan cricketers Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif have all been sent to jail after being found guilty of spot-fixing.
Corrupt cricket agent Mazhar Majeed was jailed for two years and eight months at Southwark Crown Court for plotting to fix parts of Pakistan’s Lord’s and Oval Test matches against England last summer.
Former Pakistan Test cricket captain Salman Butt was jailed for 30 months for his part in a conspiracy to bowl deliberate no-balls in the Lord’s game.
Former world number two Test bowler Mohammad Asif was jailed for one year for his involvement in the plot by intentionally bowling a no-ball during the Lord’s Test.
Teenage fast bowler Mohammad Amir was jailed for six months after he admitted bowling two deliberate no-balls in the Lord’s match.
Passing sentence, Mr Justice Cooke said the four men had damaged the image and integrity of cricket through their actions.
He said they engaged in corruption in a game whose very name used to be associated with “fair dealing on the sporting field”.
The judge told the court: “‘It’s not cricket’ was an adage. It is the insidious effect of your actions on professional cricket and the followers of it that make the offences so serious.
“The image and integrity of what was once a game but is now a business is damaged in the eyes of all, including the many youngsters who regarded you as as heroes and would have given their eye teeth to play at the levels and with the skills that you had.”
The judge said future cricket matches would forever be tainted by the fixing scandal.
He said: “Now whenever people look back on a surprising event in a game or a surprising result, or whenever in the future there are surprising events or results, followers of the game who have paid good money to watch it live or watch it on television will be left to wonder whether there has been fixing and whether what they have been watching is a genuine contest between bat and ball.
“What ought to be honest sporting competition may not be such at all.”
Butt, Asif and Majeed are expected to begin their sentences at Wandsworth prison in south London.
Amir is due to be sent to Feltham young offenders’ institute in west London, but his barrister, Henry Blaxland QC, said he intended to apply for bail later on Thursday pending an appeal against his sentence.
Butt, Asif and Majeed are expected to begin their sentences at Wandsworth prison in south London.
Source : Orange News