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Justice Jeremy Cooke didn’t do international cricket any favours when he handed down custodial sentences in a London court yesterday to three Pakistan Test players and a Pakistan agent. His parting comment was time in the slammer could be halved with good behaviour.
Seeing the sentences were light in the first place, it’s impossible to fathom why the judge added a soft “get out” clause.
He sentenced former captain Salman Butt to 30 months, Mohammad Asif 12, and Mohammad Amir six, after finding them guilty of spot-fixing by bowling no-balls against England at Lords last August at specific times.
Player agent Mazhar Majeed copped 32 months for his part in organising the scam.
It’s easy to see how these scams surface, with the Pakistanis the worst paid cricketers by far. They earn a pittance compared to their opponents. And to magnify the problem, they are forced to play all their cricket overseas because of terrorist threats at home.
Living out of a suitcase for the bulk of the year does nothing for being at home and seeing friends to lead a normal life.
That’s not excusing corruption in any way, merely explaining the Pakistani’s plight.
If the ICC wasn’t so blinkered, the governing body could use some of its multi-millions in the bank to top up the Pakistani pay-packets to compensate on both counts and make it a level playing field.
Not one of the other eight Test-playing countries would knock that suggestion. That’s not to say corruption would be wiped out, but surely it would be minimised.
And that might be enough to make the currently toothless ICC anti-corruption unit workable. The ICC spends in the vicinity of $2 million a year on the unit and what has it achieved?
Nothing, absolutely nothing.
It took a “News of the World” newspaper sting to uncover the Butt-Asif-Amir spot-fixing, while the anti-corruption unit was sitting on its hands.
Yet in some mysterious way, ICC boss Haroon Lorgat is taking some of the credit for the jailing of the four Pakistanis, despite the fact he had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
In an extraordinary statement, Lorgat said: “We will continue with our zero tolerance policy and to explore every possible avenue to ensure cricket is free from corruption.
“That is precisely what we have done”.
Overlooking the fact a newspaper sting uncovered the spot-fixing, the ICC imposed a 10-year ban on Butt, with five years suspended, a seven-year ban on Asif, with two suspended, and five years on Asif.
The ICC preceded Justice Cooke by giving soft “get-out” clauses to Butt and Asif, when the obvious decision was to impose life bans on all three from the get-go.
It’s a right royal mess the grand old game doesn’t deserve.