Banned Pakistan fast-bowler Mohammad Asif highlighted the involvement of Salman Butt while he was in the witness box for the second successive day of the spot-fixing hearing underway in London.
Butt and Asif are facing charges of conspiracy to cheat and conspiracy to obtain and accept corrupt payments following the Lord’s Test when they allegedly conspired with agent Mazhar Majeed, teenager Mohammad Amir and other people unknown to bowl pre-planned no-balls. Butt and Asif deny the charges.
On the 13th day of the hearing, the 28-year-old Asif, under cross-examination from chief prosecutor Aftab Jafferjee QC, raised the role of Butt as the questionable no-ball that the pacer delivered during the Lord’s Test last year was referred to. The no-ball, bowled on the sixth ball of the 10th over, was previously predicted by agent Mazhar Majeed during a secretly-recorded conversation with an undercover journalist.
Asif inferred the captain had to be involved to keep him bowling and asked how a fix could be made, involving the 10th over, without the skipper being a party to it, heard the court.
The banned bowler, referring to the secretly-recorded handover of £140,000 by undercover journalist Mazhar Mahmood to Majeed before the agent listed the no-ball detail, said, “The captain knows. What I have told you the last two days… the captain knows. He is the one who brings them [bowlers] on. So what is he [Majeed] saying?”
Jafferjee, after a pause, returned to Asif and said that he felt both had reached the same conclusion — Butt being central to the fix. “You’re telling me it’s down to Butt aren’t you?”
However, Asif stopped short of agreeing and responded, “You can see the CD what he [Majeed] is saying.”
The prosecutor also asked Asif if he was not involved in the spot-fixing controversy, why did Majeed call him 59 seconds after leaving the Copthorne Tara Hotel at 23:18, with a briefcase with £140,000 in cash on the night before the Lord’s Test.
“Was he calling you about a sponsorship deal or to arrange dinner Mr Asif?” Jafferjee said sarcastically.
“You think he’s calling me to do the fix?” said Asif. “He’s already done the fix,” answered Jafferjee. “Now he wants you to know about it.”
Jafferjee added, “Why is this man, who you say is not your agent, who you have only met three times in person since May 2010, why is he calling you now?”
Asif responded that if they were talking about fixing why was the call only 16 seconds long. “If we were talking about something as big as this do you think we would only need 16 seconds?” he said. Shortly after that, Butt rang Asif, a call spanning 14 seconds.
Asif repeatedly denied being part of the fix and suggested Majeed had two phones, one of them secret, and that he never called him on that secret phone like he did other people who are implicated.
The case continues.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 22nd, 2011.
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