Point Shaving & Fixes ·
Three No-Balls, Prison for Three Pakistan Cricketers
The 2010 spot-fixing plot ended in guilty verdicts for Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif; teenage bowler Mohammad Amir admitted his part before the November 2011 sentencing.
At specified points during the Lord’s Test against England in August 2010, Pakistan bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir delivered three deliberate no-balls. The deliveries had been promised in advance to an undercover reporter by sports agent Mazhar Majeed. In November 2011, the arrangement brought prison sentences for the bowlers and Salman Butt, Pakistan’s captain at the time.
The scheme concerned parts of a match rather than its final result: spot-fixing, through which particular passages of play could be arranged for betting markets. Majeed was secretly filmed accepting cash from the reporter and recorded saying the three players had accepted money to fix those markets. He promised that Asif and Amir would overstep the bowling crease at particular moments. The no-balls followed as promised.
Butt and Asif were charged after allegations about their involvement appeared in the News of the World. Both pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to obtain and accept corrupt payments and conspiracy to cheat at gambling. At Southwark Crown Court, Butt said Majeed had asked him to rig parts of matches during the 2010 World Twenty20 competition and the England Test series, but that he had ignored the requests. He acknowledged that he had not fulfilled his duty to report the corrupt approach to cricket’s authorities.
After more than four weeks of evidence, the jury found Butt and Asif guilty on both counts on November 1, 2011. Amir’s route through the proceedings differed: the 19-year-old had admitted his part before the trial, including bowling two intentional no-balls at Lord’s. He offered an apology at the sentencing hearing.
On November 3, Butt received 30 months in prison for his role as the plot’s orchestrator. Asif received a year for delivering one of the fraudulent no-balls. Amir was sentenced to six months in a young offenders institution. Majeed, who had pleaded guilty before trial to conspiracy to cheat and conspiracy to make corrupt payments, received two years and eight months. The three players had already been barred from cricket for at least five years by the International Cricket Council.
The cricketers showed no reaction as the sentences were handed down, Reuters reported. Butt’s father, Zulfiqar, said his son had been made a scapegoat. Butt’s wife had given birth earlier that week, leaving him facing a long wait to meet their baby.
Judge Jeremy Cooke told the court that the damage extended to young people who had regarded the players as heroes, and to spectators who could no longer take an unexpected moment of play at face value. Followers watching a surprising event or result, he said, would be left to wonder “whether there has been fixing and whether what they have been watching is a genuine contest between bat and ball.”