Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif have lost their appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over bans handed down for spot-fixing.
The International Cricket Council banned Butt for 10 years, with five suspended, and Asif for seven years, with two suspended, for their role in the spot-fixing scandal that also involved team-mate Mohammad Amir.
The 28-year-old Butt was named as the orchestrator of a plot to bowl deliberate no-balls in the Lord’s Test against England in 2010, with Asif and Amir the men who delivered them.
Lawyers for Butt say the Court of Arbitration for Sport has dismissed his appeal to get the ban overturned.
A statement released by Farani Javid Taylor Solicitors says they “will continue to explore other avenues to appeal Mr. Butt’s case to help him resume his professional cricket career immediately.”
Amer Rahman, who represented Butt during his appeal, said Butt is “bitterly disappointed” with the decision.
A Court of Arbitration for Sport statement read: “The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has dismissed the appeals filed by the Pakistani cricket players Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt against the decisions taken by the International Cricket Council Tribunal on 5 February 2011 in which Mr Asif received seven years ineligibility (two suspended) and Mr Butt ten years (five suspended) following an investigation into spot-fixing in relation to “no balls” bowled during a Test Match played in London in 2010.”
A statement said: “The CAS Panel found that there was no evidence advanced by Mr Asif which clearly exculpated him and that his submissions did not break the chain of circumstantial evidence or in any way undermine the reasoning contained in the ICC’s Tribunal’s decision.”
In regard to Butt, the CAS statement said: “The CAS panel was not persuaded that the sanction imposed by the ICC Tribunal was disproportionate, nor that any of the mitigating factors advanced by Mr Butt qualified as exceptional circumstances. ”
Several news agencies, including Sky Sports and the BBC, quoted a press release issued by Butt’s lawyers as saying he was “bitterly disappointed” with the CAS decision but would continue to fight to clear his name.
Butt, Asif and Mohammad Amir had been found guilty at Southwark Crown Court in November 2011, on charges of conspiracy to cheat and conspiracy to accept corrupt payments over deliberate no-balls bowled during the Lord’s Test between Pakistan and England in August 2010.
Amir, the third player to be caught in the News of the World sting, decided not to appeal against the five-year ICC ban against him. The ban does not permit the players to take part in any official match – international, domestic or club – until at least September 2015.
All three players served time. Butt served seven months of a 30-month prison sentence, Asif was released from Canterbury Prison in Kent on June 3 2012 after he served half of a year-long sentence while Amir spent three months in a young offenders’ institution after admitting his charge at a pre-trial hearing.