LONDON – Four Pakistani cricketers have been handed jail sentences after being found guilty of conspiring to make cricket “kind of interesting for a few minutes.”
A jury deemed the sportsmen Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, along with cricket agent Mazhar Majeed had played key roles in a spot-fixing scandal that briefly made cricket “far more interesting than one had any right to expect.”
Spot-fixing is described as “an act carried out during a game of cricket that raises the interest in the game for those involved from marginal to vaguely interested in the moment to moment outcome.”
Unrealistic expectations
The trial judge Mr Justice Cook said the offenses demanded jail terms “to mark the nature of the crime and deter any other individual from giving the impression that interesting things can happen during a typical cricket match.”
Following the verdict, dozens of angry Pakistani cricket fans could be seen burning effigies of the disgraced men for turning their beloved sport “into a marginally interesting spectacle for a few moments.”
The scandal had sparked fears that news worthy excitement and intrigue was widespread in the sport of cricket. The International Cricket Council have been quick to assure fans that the that the sport of cricket “was not always this exciting.”
ICC corruption chief Sir Ronnie Flanagan said: “They [interesting moments] are certainly not rampant in the world of cricket.”
“We understand what these men did and we accept the severity. But that does not mean that the rest of the sport will always be this exciting – it’s important we keep things in perspective.”
‘Excitement is not endemic’
Former England Captain Nasir Hussain said he was embarrassed for the sport: “The sentences were light considering what these men had done: making millions of people believe that interesting things can happen during five days of non-stop bat on ball action.”
Despite the potential for misunderstanding, Sports Minister Hugh Robertson remained confident the plot represented an isolated case and after watching a recent match between England and India said he was “reassured this spot fixing business will be as exciting as things would ever get.”
Mr Flanagan agreed that “the vast, vast majority of cricket matches are wonderfully boring affairs – how else would we sell all this beer?”
“My message to the followers of cricket is don’t be thinking that this kind of excitement is rampant within the game. It’s really not.”
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