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DUBAI: The guilty verdicts handed out to Pakistan cricketers Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif in a British criminal court on Tuesday should act as a deterrent and stop others from corrupting the sport, International Cricket Council (ICC) chief executive Haroon Lorgat said.
Butt and Asif were found guilty of conspiracy to cheat and conspiracy to accept corrupt payments for fixing part of a test match in England last year.
A third cricketer, teenaged fast bowler Mohammad Amir, pleaded guilty to the charges before the start of the court case. All three will be sentenced on Wednesday.
“We hope that this verdict is seen as a further warning to any individual who might, for whatever reason, be tempted to engage in corrupt activity within our sport,” Lorgat said in a statement.
The trio were suspended from cricket for at least five years by the ICC earlier this year and Lorgat said those penalties remained unchanged.
“These outcomes appear to be consistent with the findings of the independent anti-corruption tribunal...earlier this year. Those proceedings ultimately resulted in the three players being found guilty of offences under the Anti-Corruption Code and they were accordingly suspended from all forms of cricket,” Lorgat said.
“To be clear, the developments in the English criminal courts will have no impact upon those periods of suspension, which will remain in full force and effect.”
Tuesday's findings followed allegations in a British newspaper that the trio had arranged for deliberate no-balls to be delivered in the fourth test at Lord's last year.
It was the second time in 12 years that corruption was found to be rampant in cricket after the match-fixing scandal in 2000 when three international captains, Hansie Cronje (South Africa), Saleem Malik (Pakistan) and Mohammed Azharuddin (India) were banned from all forms of cricket, along with several other players.
