Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif, Mohammad Amir Jailed For Spot-Fixing

The trio of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir have been jailed by the Southwark court in London for their involvement in spot-fixing. The trio had been accused of spot-fixing in a game that was held last August in England and hence were tried in England for the last few months.

The jury had pronounced the pair of Asif and Butt guilty on November 1, whereas Amir had admitted to his guilt in September. There was a fourth person, the agent to these players, Mazhar Majeed, who had also confessed to his crime and he has also been sent to jail.

Butt has received a sentence of two and a half years, while Asif has got a year in a jail. Amir, on the other hand, given his admission gets six months in jail while the agent, who was said to be the perpetrator of the crime has been sentenced to two years and eight months of jail-time.

The judge has also ruled that the four could be released early from the jail if they show good behaviour.

The four can now appeal to a higher court.

This is what the judge Justice Cooke is said to have told the cricketers:

“Now, when people look back at a surprising event in a game or a surprising result or ever in the future there are surprising results, followers of the game who have paid to watch cricket or who have watched cricket on TV will wonder whether there has been a fix or what they have watched was natural."

"It's clear you were the orchestrator of these matters," Justice Cooke told Butt. "You had to be to make sure these two bowlers were bowling at the time of the fix."

To Asif he said: "Whilst no money was found in your possession, it's clear that you conspired to bowl a no-ball. There's no evidence on your part of prior fixing but it's hard to see that this could have been an isolated incident."