Pakistan former captain Salman Butt and fast bowler Mohammad Amir lost their appeals against their jail sentences in a London court on Wednesday. Both the players were not present at the Court of Appeal in London for the proceedings before the Lord Chief Justice and two other judges of UK High court dismissed the appeals. Butt, 27, was jailed for 30 months and Amir, 19, received a six-month term.
They were sentenced over bowling deliberate no-balls in a Test match against England. In the case, Mohammad Asif, 28, and British born Pakistani cricket agent Mazhar Majeed were also jailed. The judges rejected the plea that Butt’s sentence was “manifestly excessive” and the argument that Amir should have been given a suspended sentence.
Lord Chief Justice Igor Judge said the corruption had been “carefully prepared” and the cricketers had betrayed their team, their country, their sport and the “followers of the game throughout the world”.He said their “notorious” case was a “carefully prepared” corruption conspiracy which merited a “criminal sanction”. If corruption continued then the enjoyment of those who watch cricket would “eventually be destroyed”, Lord Judge said.
Butt’s lawyer Ali Bajwa argued his client’s sentence was “out of proportion to the seriousness of the offence that was committed”. Bajwa described Butt as a broken man in a state of “ruin and disgrace”, and added that the very fact of imprisonment “amounted to exceptional punishment”. Amir’s lawyer Henry Blaxland argued for a suspended sentence that would allow his immediate release.
Amir would have remained in the UK to carry out any community service, Mr Blaxland added. Lord Judge said the conspiracy “was not set up on the spur of the moment and it was not the result of some temptation to which either appellant succumbed, in effect, on the spur of the moment”. He said the court had to make clear that what the cricketers did was “not simply a matter of breaking the rules of the game” and therefore subject to internal discipline and regulation. “It is also criminal conduct of a very serious kind which must be marked with a criminal sanction,” he said. The fixing plot was uncovered by the News of the World, the Rupert Murdoch-owned British tabloid which was shut down in July over the phone-hacking scandal.
