Cricket: Spot-fixing hearing begins

Butt, Asif appear before judge, jury comprising 12 members sworn in, trial could last ‘five to six weeks’.

Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt and fast-bowler Mohammad Asif went on trial in London yesterday charged with spot-fixing during a Test match against England last year, in allegations which rocked the world of cricket.

Butt, 26, and Asif, 28, appeared at Southwark Crown Court charged with conspiracy to obtain and accept corrupt payments, and conspiracy to cheat. The charges relate to allegations of deliberately bowling no-balls during England’s fourth Test against Pakistan at Lord’s in London last August.

The allegations were made by the News of the World, which was closed down in July this year when it became engulfed in the phone hacking scandal.

The pair denies the charges. The offences carry maximum sentences of seven years and two years in prison respectively.

Potential jurors in the trial were asked whether they or their families worked in the gambling industry or earned money from professional cricket or have ever been employed in journalism.

Judge Jeremy Cooke told the group of 30 men and women from whom the 12 jurors were eventually chosen that the trial could last up to five weeks. Seven men and five women were chosen to be part of the jury.

Butt stood in the dock wearing a grey pinstripe suit and white shirt while the taller Asif wore a black suit with white shirt.

Two other people – 19-year-old Mohammad Amir and the trio’s agent Mazhar Majeed – have also been charged with the same offences.

At the time when the spot-fixing scandal first surfaced, Butt was captain of the Pakistan Test side and had won many plaudits for his leadership of the team. Asif was the team’s senior pace bowler, while teenage left-arm swing bowler Amir was regarded as one of the hottest properties in world cricket.

The allegations stem from a probe by Mazher Mahmood, former undercover reporter for the News of the World. Prior knowledge of when no-balls will occur could be exploited in what is known as ‘spot-betting’, hugely popular in South Asia, whereby gamblers bet on various possible incidents in a match rather than the final outcome.

The morning session, according to a journalist present inside the court room, was ‘mostly technical deliberations about whether some evidence is admissible’.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5^th, 2011.