Cricketers in trouble

Even if we adopt the traditional innocent-until-proven-guilty posture, there is no denying that Salman Butt, Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Amir are in trouble. It was not just their careers that were on the line as their spot-fixing hearings began in Doha, Qatar on January 6. How the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) reacts to the likely guilty verdict will show a lot about the future of cricket in the country.

Of the three accused, Butt is least likely to be allowed to play cricket ever again. By all accounts, he was the ringleader of the alleged cheaters and it was in his room that a large amount of cash was found. If found guilty, nothing short of a life ban would suffice. The same is true of Asif. Having survived two drug busts, the pacer doesn’t deserve a third chance. In his off-and-on career, Asif has been as indiscreet off the field as he has been brilliant on it. But talent is no defence. Age, however, may be grounds for leniency. Amir, given his youth, can surely plead for leniency. If a guilty verdict is forthcoming, it would be appropriate to give him a shorter ban — say, two years. That should be a punishment sufficient to deter him from future misdemeanours without destroying his career.

A guilty verdict should also bring a long overdue end to Ijaz Butt’s disastrous tenure as chairman of the PCB. It says a lot about his mismanagement that, despite the rumours which had been swirling since our tour to Australia at the start of 2010, it was a tabloid that finally forced us to look seriously at corruption in the game. Butt’s defensiveness after the damning allegations were aired, going so far as to baselessly accuse the English of match-fixing, should have been the last time he was allowed to embarrass Pakistani cricket. We desperately need a chairman of unimpeachable honesty who will be able to overhaul our decrepit system. Ijaz Butt is not the man for that job.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2011.