As a cricket fan it's never nice to see your sport dragged through the courts but I for one am glad to see cheats being caught and punished. The former Pakistan Test stars Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were today given prison terms for conspiring to bowl deliberate no-balls in the 2010 Lord's Test match against England. Captain Butt was sentenced to 30 months, compared with a year for Mohammad Asif and six months for Mohammad Amir. The agent at the heart of the spot-betting scandal, Mazhar Majeed was sent down for two years and eight months, and he can count himself lucky it wasn't more.
It's a shame that it was left to the English criminal courts to dish out sentences which will hopefully send the message to other cheats or potential cheats that getting involved in actions that collectively destroy the integrity of cricket will lead to a spell in prison. At first I felt sorry for the teenage Amir, whose international career was just beginning to take off. However, while his sentence was reduced because of a guilty plea, it transpired that he wasn't just an unfortunate victim. No doubt he was led astray by a captain he trusted but he got greedy just like the rest of them. His poor family background is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether you come from a slum or palace, some people can't help going for supposedly easy money when it's waved in front of their noses, while knowing it's illegal and against everything the sport stands for.
The judge, Mr Justice Cooke seemed to get it absolutely right in his verdict, words and sentences, castigating the corrupt four for their actions. He wasn't fooled by the last minute swapping of blame by Butt and Majeed which made the TV boardroom antics in The Apprentice look positively mature! Butt's lawyer is set to lodge an appeal but I fervently hope it's thrown out. Even if he serves only a year, hopefully it will be enough to make him ashamed for what he has done. The cricket authorities have issued a mere five-year ban, bottling it as usual. Amir will still be a young man when he serves his time on the sidelines but will he ever be trusted again?
Sadly we all know that the Lord's Test is unlikely to have been the first occasion when top players have deliberately given away runs in return for cash. It is probably not just a Pakistan issue either. Nor just a cricket one. With the internet making gambling a global business and sport spreading, too, it's easy for a culture of corruption to develop and become endemic. The vast majority of professional sportsmen are surely clean and would not contemplate jeopardising their careers in this way but it takes only a few avaricious individuals to taint the sport. For some, bowling a no-ball to order may sound like a trivial offence which does not justify a custodial sentence. Maybe that's true but if it stops others from slipping into this murky world then today's verdicts will be worth it.
