Salman Butt and Pakistan bowlers jailed for betting scam

[muriel_volestrangler]

International sports news - since this means that one country's players are being jailed in another country for fixing a match, I thought it might be of interest to DU too.

Former Pakistan cricket captain Salman Butt has been jailed for 30 months for his part in the conspiracy to bowl deliberate no-balls in last year's Test match against England.

Former world number two Test bowler Mohammad Asif, 28, was jailed for one year and bowler Mohammad Amir, 19, has been sentenced to six months.
...
An undercover News of the World (NOTW) reporter paid Majeed £150,000 for details of the precise timing of three no-balls, which the players were persuaded to bowl, which were extremely valuable on the spot-fixing betting market.

Majeed claimed to have paid Asif £65,000, Butt £10,000 and Amir £2,500.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15573463

Pretty tough sentences, especially for Amir, who was only 18 at the time, plead guilty, and was generally thought to have been pushed into this.

For background, a 'no-ball' is when the bowler does something wrong with the delivery - in this case, stepping over the line before bowling the ball. It gives one run to the opposing side, and the ball is bowled again; so, with a total number of runs for a side in a match of perhaps 500 or more, wouldn't often affect the whole outcome often, and it's not unusual to see a few in a match. The betting would depend on exactly when a no-ball happened.

The other thing to note is that this was exposed by a News of the World undercover operation - ie the Murdoch paper that was at the centre of the phone hacking scandal. This, I would admit, was ethical journalism by the paper.