Pakistan cricket spot-fixing trio wrongly punished?

British journalist Ed Hawkins has made yet another claim that the three Pakistani cricketers who were convicted of spot-fixing may have been wrongly punished.

Hawkins, in his soon to be published book ‘Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy: Journey to the corrupt heart of cricket’s underworld’, has claimed that the disgraced trio Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif were scammed in the spot-fixing case.

He wrote in an article on Monday that in India, fixing is not done on no-balls and therefore, Justice Cook’s verdict regarding the involvement of three Pakistani cricketers in spot-fixing was unjust, according to The News.

“’Do you think we’re fools?’ one Indian bookie told me. ‘If someone says they want this no-ball bet for big monies and I’m Ladbrokes, I tell them to go away. No bookmaker in the world takes this bet.’

“The reason would be that they suspected you had inside information. And it is no different in India.

"You could argue that in the case of the Pakistan ‘spot-fixing’, it is irrelevant that one would not have been able to bet on a no-ball. The three Pakistan players were shown to be guilty of corrupt practices. They were cheating the game, their team-mates and the spectators.

“And you would be absolutely right, but only if the court they were being tried in and the judge who would sentence them were aware that a no-ball is not a betting opportunity in India.

“The court was not aware. The judge was not aware. This much is clear from the erroneous sentencing remarks by the Hon Mr Justice Cooke: ‘Bets could be placed on these no-balls in unlawful markets, mostly abroad, based on inside advance knowledge of what was going to happen...

“Individuals in India were making £40,000–£50,000 on each identified no-ball. On three no-balls, therefore, the bookmakers stood to lose £150,000 on each bet by cheating a punter.’

“Butt, Asif, Amir and Majeed went to prison for charges that included ‘conspiracy to cheat at gambling’. If there was no bet placed, if there was no opportunity to even place that bet and therefore no one was defrauded, can anyone be guilty of such a charge?,” asked Hawkins.

Hawkins, a sport betting journalist who spent months investigating corruption in cricket, had earlier claimed that the semi-final between Pakistan and India of World Cup 2011 was fixed.

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