Muhammad Asif Khan
After the International Cricket Council (ICC), independent anti-corruption
tribunal and the London
court, the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) also upheld the penalties
imposed by the ICC on Pakistani crickets Muhammad Asif and Salman Butt.
After ICC’s suspensions, during the January 2011 hearing in Doha, an independent anti-corruption
tribunal handed Salman Butt and Muhammad Asif 10 and 7 years bans respectively,
out of which five years were suspended on condition that, throughout that
period, both would not commit any further breach of the code and would
participate in anti-corruption education programmes.
Later in November 2011, Salman Butt along with Muhammad Amir – banned for
five years - failed to reduce their sentences after the lord chief justice
rejected their appeals, telling their legal teams that the pair had been guilty
of "criminal conduct of a very serious kind".
The interesting aspect, during the hearing, was the statement of Salman
Butt’s lawyer, Ali Bajwa who argued that Salman Butt's sentence was "out
of proportion to the seriousness of the offence that was committed". For
the first time Bajwa admitted that Butt had been involved in arranging the no-balls
– something that emerged neither in the trial nor in his mitigation-plea
hearing – and that this was a criminal offence, but he claimed that spot fixing
of individual events was at the "lower end of the scale" of such
offences, with result fixing the gravest. Bajwa described Butt as a broken man
in a state of "ruin and disgrace".
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/nov/23/pakistan-spot-fixing-sentences-appeal]
Then comes the latest CAS appeal hearing where Asif challenged the suspension
by the ICC tribunal but on the other hand Salman Butt only requested that the
sanction be reduced to less than five years. Why Salman only sough reduction? Doesn’t
it mean he accepted the charge against him? Of course, because prior to him,
his lawyer admitted that as well (as mentioned above)
Now Salman Butt is eyeing a return after serving the 5-year period out of
which he had already served little over 30 months, but it is not that simple.
Both Salman Butt and Muhammad
Asif have to complete the five-year period first and then as per the article
6.7 of the ICC Anti-corruption code, both have to go through a procedure to earn
eligibility to hit a cricket ground again.
The article 6.7 of the ICC
Anti-corruption code states that once the period of ineligibility – five years -
has expired they (Asif & Butt) will automatically become re-eligible to
play provided that they had
·
Completed an official anti-corruption
education session to the reasonable satisfaction of the ACSU.
·
Satisfied, in full, any fine and/or
award of costs made against them by any Anti-Corruption Tribunal or CAS panel
·
Agreed to subject them to such
additional reasonable and proportionate monitoring procedures and requirements
as the ACSU's General Manager may reasonably consider necessary given the
nature and scope of the offence committed.
Now the scenario is pretty clear,
unless Salman Butt and Muhammad Asif fulfill the above mentioned pre-requisites
their return does not seem possible.
The writer is a Pakistani
sports journalist, heads the sports department at News One TV & tweets @mak_asif
KARACHI:
The chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), Zaka Ashraf has been taking
numerous steps for the betterment of Pakistan
cricket and in this regard, chalking out an exchange programme with the England and
Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is one of the major strides in the future. “We are in
talks with the ECB to finalise an exchange programme under which our fast
bowlers will tour England,
while young English spinners will come to Pakistan”, said Zaka Ashraf while
talking to this correspondent for News One TV.
