Is Life Too Long For a Couple of No-Balls?

This weekend saw bans handed down to the three Pakistani cricketers involved in the Spot Fixing scandal that erupted after the Lords test against England last summer.

"You see that News of the World journalist over there?"

Salman Butt was given 10 years with 5 suspended, Mohammad Asif got 7 years with 2 suspended, and the youngest member of the trio, Mohammad Amir, got 5 years, with none suspended.

So five years all round then?

Butt, captain of the team and whose responsibility it is to select which bowler bowls when, instructed both Asif and Amir to bowl the exact overs that would coincide with the terms of the bet his agent, Mazhar Majeed, had put on with a News Of The World journalist prior to the game. Said conversation between Majeed and NOTW was video recorded and released to the world and hey presto, here we are 6 months later. Majeed and Butt in particular are as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile of poo surely, no?

This was calculated cheating of the highest order and whilst the outcome of the no-balls is negligible to the game itself, the fact that Majeet, Butt and his bowling colleagues were seeking to make financial gains from bowling no-balls is a disgrace and should not be tolerated in the sport, or any other for that matter.



MASSIVE no-ball - as subtle as a brick in the face



In the case of Amir, I have some (some!) sympathy for him. He was still stupid/weak/influenced enough to go along with the scam, whether he wanted to or not, but as a young boy (23 only), it is possible, or plausible at least, to put a case forward that he has been influenced, or coerced into going along with it. 

That said, in a bid to save his own skin, perhaps he could have broken ranks and said he was intimidated or influenced to bowl the no-balls. The fact he didn’t could be interpreted in two ways; either he has no regrets, or he is still being intimidated.

The latter, for the bigger picture of Pakistani cricket more generally would be worrying, especially given stories of other players being intimidated for not participating in similar scams. It would be terrible to find out down the line that this isn't a one-off and is actually a problem imbedded in Cricket more generally.

However, the final point to make on this is that, whilst these players have clearly been made an example of, in the case of Amir particularly, he is a young test cricket bowler with huge promise, and he couldn’t possibly be banned for life: Test cricket is under huge pressure to deliver exciting, intriguing action, given the emergence of 20-20 cricket, and to lose someone as gifted and exciting as Amir would be counter-productive to this form of the game.

It's almost a case of cutting your nose off to spite your face. The ICC has to eradicate cheating from its sport no question, but it cannot afford to lose kids of Amir's promise at the same time. These sanctions are firm, and in Amir’s case, probably fair. At least he has time on his side to learn from his mistakes and perform at the highest level again in the future.