CRICKET:MOHAMMAD AMIR and Salman Butt have failed to reduce their sentences after the British lord chief justice rejected their appeals, telling their legal teams yesterday that the pair had been guilty of "criminal conduct of a very serious kind".
Lord Judge led a panel of three appeal court judges, with Mr Justice Royce and Mr Justice Globe beside him, which rejected the two former international cricketers’ applications to limit their jail terms.
Butt, the former Pakistan captain, is serving 30 months as the “orchestrator” of the spot fixing during the fourth Test between England and his team at Lord’s in August 2010. He was described yesterday as a “malign influence” on his team-mates Amir and Mohammad Asif. The latter of the two bowlers who delivered the illegal no-balls in that Test is the subject of a 12-month sentence, and has separately made an application for grounds for appeal against his conviction.
Earlier Ali Bajwa QC, for Butt, had argued that his client’s sentence was “out of proportion to the seriousness of the offence that was committed”. For the first time Bajwa admitted that Butt had been involved in arranging the no-balls – something that emerged neither in the trial nor in his mitigation-plea hearing – and that this was a criminal offence, but he claimed that spot fixing was at the “lower end of the scale”.
In claiming that the sentence his client had received was “manifestly excessive”, Bajwa drew comparison with sentencing in the MPs’ expenses scandal. “There are elements in common,” Bajwa said. “Is the criminality more grave than the criminality of MPs and peers involved in the expenses scandal case?”
However, the three senior judges reinforced what their high court colleague Mr Justice Cooke had stated in his closing remarks at the trial at Southwark crown court three weeks ago. “These three cricketers betrayed their team, the country they had the honour to represent, the sport that gave them their distinction and all the followers of the game around the world,” Lord Judge said.
Amir, who is serving six months in a young offenders’ institution, was found to be “much less culpable” than his captain due to being 18 years of age at the time of the corrupt activity. But Lord Judge took account of the fact that he “happily took the financial reward” on offer and that when charged by the International Cricket Council he had denied culpability.
All three had denied the charges brought before the ICC tribunal in Doha last February, headed by Michael Beloff QC. It handed Butt a 10-year ban from playing or coaching, with five years suspended. Asif’s ban was for seven years, with two suspended, and Amir’s was for five years, all of them effective.
