Pakistan players and agent charged over betting scandal

By Owen Gibson, republished from The Guardian: The three Pakistan players at the centre of the spot-fixing row that rocked cricket last summer were today told they would face criminal charges in a British court, becoming high-profile test cases for new legislation introduced five years ago to prevent cheating at gambling. The trio will tomorrow hear from an International Cricket Council tribunal in Qatar whether they face lengthy or even life bans from the sport under the governing body's regulatory code, but must now also return to London next month to face charges of conspiracy to obtain and accept corrupt payments and also conspiracy to cheat.

The batsman Salman Butt, who was captain at the time of the incidents under investigation, and the fast bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were told that extradition treaties would be sought if they did not return to London voluntarily, as they promised when they returned to Pakistan amid a swirl of controversy in September. The charges, which carry maximum sentences of seven years and two years in prison respectively, also apply to the alleged "fixer", Mazhar Majeed. Majeed, who acted as an agent to several Pakistan players including Butt and was alleged by the News of the World to have accepted payment in return for ordering no-balls to be bowled at specific points, is also under investigation for money laundering by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

"These charges relate to allegations that Mr Majeed accepted money from a third party to arrange for the players to bowl no-balls on 26 and 27 August 2010, during Pakistan's fourth Test at Lord's cricket ground in London," said Simon Clements, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service's special crime division. He said the CPS had worked closely with the police since the allegations first became public on 27 August last year. "We received a full file of evidence on 7 December 2010 and we are satisfied there is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction and it is in the public interest to prosecute," Clements added.

Majeed was alleged to have accepted £150,000 from reporters posing as frontmen for a Far East gambling cartel and allegedly stated when the three no-balls would be bowled. The reported claims appeared to be borne out by the events of the second day of the Fourth Test, when they were delivered as predicted. The four men will appear before the City of Westminster magistrates court on 17 March, but the case is unlikely to reach a full trial for over a year, casting an ongoing shadow over the sport. Unlike the players, Majeed, also under investigation for alleged money laundering by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, did not appear at the recent ICC hearing in Doha, Qatar, because he does not fall under the aegis of its sporting code.

A three-person panel, headed by Michael Beloff QC, heard more than 45 hours of evidence from the three players and other witnesses and will today rule on whether they should face bans of between five years and life in the worst betting scandal to hit the sport since the Hansie Cronje affair. The criminal case will also pose more problems for the ICC, which had hoped to draw a line under the affair ahead of the forthcoming Cricket World Cup. At the height of the controversy last year, when it appeared the Pakistan team may call off their tour of England and the country's high commissioner claimed the allegations were part of a smear campaign, there were fears the scandal could fundamentally undermine the sport. It also sparked widespread concern at the extent to which illegal gambling operations in the Far East and Asia had infiltrated professional sport.

In November, the former Pakistani wicketkeeper Zulqarnain Haider fled to London claiming his life was in danger after refusing to co-operate with match-fixers. He has yet to hear whether his asylum request has been granted. Previous high-profile attempts to tackle alleged sporting corruption have ended embarrassingly for the CPS, as when the trial involving jockey Kieren Fallon collapsed. The offence of conspiracy to cheat, introduced under the 2005 Gambling Act, is untested in British courts. A parallel case, involving the former Essex bowler Mervyn Westfield, could be the first to reach trial. Westfield, who faces the same charges as the Pakistan trio but without the conspiracy element, is alleged to have bowled in such a way to allow his opponents to reach a certain score during a one-day county match against Durham. He is scheduled to appear in court again next week.

How Cricket Explains Pakistan

Reprinted from Foreign Policy: In some countries, like England and Australia, cricket is played as recreation; in others, like India, as meditation. Watching Pakistani cricketers, however, one senses the sport is their purest physical expression. They are like Argentine footballers: unpredictable, a little shady, a bit dangerous, full of eccentrics and cranks, often inefficient and blundering, but possessed of a mercurial passion and an utter magic. When the legendary cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan led Pakistan to an improbable World Cup win in 1992, it wasn't just a triumph of skill, it was a celebration of cricket itself -- a game, its followers like to say, of "glorious uncertainties." Then, as now, in the lanes of Karachi and Lahore, in track pants and tees with duct tape wrapped around a tennis ball, or on parched Punjab dustlands, barefoot in salwar kameezes with homemade bats and bricks for stumps, youngsters are to be found tearing in to bowl, in a performance always. So when the brilliant light of Pakistan cricket dims, the rest of the cricket world takes notice. And these days, Pakistan is confronting some of its dimmest times, in cricket as in everything else.

In November 2008, following the Mumbai attack launched by Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, India broke cricket ties with Pakistan, causing the game there a significant financial blow. A few months later, in March 2009, a terrorist group attacked a visiting Sri Lankan team. This attack, undertaken in clear morning light, as the team bus drove to the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, injured several of the players and killed six security men and the bus driver. Pakistan has not been able to host international cricket on home soil ever since. Then, in 2010, the national team was rocked by a match-fixing scandal: Three leading players, including the captain, were suspended as a result of a sting operation conducted by the British tabloid News of the World (the players are currently in Doha at a special cricket corruption court for hearings that are expected to conclude on Jan. 11), and a widening investigation has placed several other players under suspicion. Three years, three body blows to Pakistani cricket. It now stands on the brink of collapse.

Each of these events has deep roots. The modern concept of sport as big business came late to cricket. Not until India's economy was opened up in the mid-1990s, attracting multinational companies trying to reach a mammoth audience through advertising spots, could international cricket dream of signing television or player contracts worth even a fraction of those in, say, soccer or baseball. The coming of big money led to the thoughtless overscheduling of tournaments and, in an underregulated atmosphere, an explosion of interest from underworld betting cartels. These factors combusted into cricket's first match-fixing crisis in 2000, tarring big names across the world but especially in India, Pakistan, and South Africa. One may argue that India is scarcely a less corrupt nation than its neighbor -- the founder-commissioner of the big-bucks Indian Premier League, in fact, is under investigation on a wide range of corruption charges -- but at least it has been able to reward its elite cricketers spectacularly.

To read the complete article by Rahul Bhattacharya in Foreign Policy magazine, click on the title link, "How Cricket Explains Pakistan".