(REUTERS) – Spot-fixing quartet Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif, Mohammad Amir and Mazhar Majeed have all been sentenced to prison terms.
Former Pakistan captain Butt has been jailed for two years and six months, while sports agent Majeed has been sentenced to two years and eight months for corruption.
Paceman Asif faces one year in prison, with Amir jailed for six months. Butt and Amir both plan to appeal their sentences.
Butt and Asif were found guilty on Tuesday of taking bribes to fix part of a Test match against England in a case that prosecutors said revealed rampant corruption at the heart of international cricket.
Former captain Butt, 27, and opening bowlers Asif, 28, and 19-year-old Amir, who had admitted his part in the scam before the trial started, plotted to bowl deliberate no-balls at pre-arranged times during the Lord’s Test in August last year.
Amir had admitted his part in the scam before the trial started and had also offered a heartfelt apology during the sentence hearing.
The trio have already been banned from playing by the International Cricket Council for a minimum of five years.
The three players were caught after an undercover News of the World reporter recorded Majeed, 36, boasting how he could arrange for Pakistan cricketers to rig games for money. The agent was secretly filmed accepting £150 000 in cash from the journalist.
Passing sentence, Mr Justice Cooke said the four men had damaged the image and integrity of cricket through their actions.
He said they engaged in corruption in a game whose very name used to be associated with “fair dealing on the sporting field”.
The judge told the court: “‘It’s not cricket’ was an adage. It is the insidious effect of your actions on professional cricket and the followers of it that make the offences so serious.
“The image and integrity of what was once a game but is now a business is damaged in the eyes of all, including the many youngsters who regarded you as heroes and would have given their eye teeth to play at the levels and with the skills that you had.”
He added: “Now whenever people look back on a surprising event in a game or a surprising result, or whenever in the future there are surprising events or results, followers of the game who have paid good money to watch it live or watch it on television will be left to wonder whether there has been fixing and whether what they have been watching is a genuine contest between bat and ball.
“What ought to be honest sporting competition may not be such at all.”
The men were all sentenced yesterday morning at Southwark Crown Court. All are likely to serve half their sentences before being released on licence.