• Salman Butt jailed for 30 months for his involvement
• Bowlers Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Aamer received a year and six months respectively
• 
  

Millions of cricket fans will never again trust what they see on the field because of the match-fixing scandal, a judge said yesterday.

Three corrupt Pakistan players were savaged for tainting cricket by taking bungs as part of a shadowy international gambling scam.

The men were told they had irrevocably damaged the name of a sport which was once a byword for ‘fair dealing’.

Sentence: Pakistan cricketer Mohammed Aamer arrives at Southwark Crown court, where he was jailed for six months

Jailed: Former world number two Test bowler Mohammad Asif, left, was jailed for one year while Pakistan Test cricket captain Salman Butt, right, was jailed for 30 months. Both are pictured entering court

Mr Justice Cooke said former Test captain Salman Butt and bowlers Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Aamer betrayed legions of fans for greed. Jailing the men at Southwark Crown Court yesterday, he said people watching cricket will be ‘left to wonder’ whether surprising results were genuine.

Mr Justice Cooke said: ‘It is the insidious effect of your actions on professional cricket and the followers of it that make the offences so serious.

‘The image and integrity of what was once a game but is now a business is damaged in the eyes of all, including the many youngsters who regarded you as heroes and would have given their eye teeth to play at the levels and with the skills that you had.

‘You procured the bowling of three no-balls for money, to the detriment of your national cricket team, with the object of enabling others to cheat at gambling.

‘Now whenever people look back on a surprising event in a game or a surprising result, or whenever in the future there are surprising events or results, followers of the game will be left to wonder whether there has been fixing and whether what they have been watching is a genuine contest between bat and ball. What ought to be honest sporting competition may not be such at all.’

In the dock: (left to right) Majeed, Butt, Asif, and Amir hear they are to be jailed by Justice Cooke

Struggle: Salman Butt had to fight his way through the media as he arrived at Southwark Crown Court and was given the heaviest sentence for his role in the scam

The three players were jailed alongside agent Mazhar Majeed, who was caught orchestrating the scandal in an undercover sting by the News of the World.

'Whenever in the future there are surprising events or results, followers of the game with be left to wonder whether there has been fixing'

Mr Justice Cooke, yesterday

They agreed to bowl three no-balls at specified points during a Lord’s Test match last August in return for £150,000.

The jail sentences closed one chapter in an extraordinary scandal that has rocked the international game.

But questions remain over how far the corruption had spread and whether other Pakistan players were involved. Butt, 27, dubbed the ‘architect’ of the lucrative betting scam, was jailed for two and a half years just two days after his wife gave birth to a second son in Pakistan.

The world’s former No 2-ranked Test bowler Asif, 28, received a 12-month term. Aamer, 19, once tipped to become one of the all-time great fast bowlers, was jailed for six months.

Former Croydon Athletic FC owner Majeed, 36, who boasted he had made ‘masses and masses of money’, was jailed for two years and eight months.

Pleading his innocence: the sisters of cricketer Salman Butt talk to journalists in Lahore, Pakistan, after hearing that their brother had been jailed

Distress: Mohamma Ijaz, the brother of Mohammed Aamer, reacts as he hears the verdict at the family home in Changa Bangial village

Anger: Pakistani cricket fans gather and burnt posters depicting the three players after hearing the verdicts

He was secretly videoed counting huge sums of money and bragging that he could fix an entire Test match for a million dollars.

The four defendants sat impassively in a courtroom packed with journalists and cricket fans as they learned their fates. They will be released on licence after serving half their sentences and are almost certain to be deported.

Butt, Asif and Majeed were sent to Wandsworth prison in south-west London. Aamer, who is appealing his sentence, was sent to Feltham young offenders’ institution.

The judge said Butt was responsible for involving the ‘impressionable’ Aamer, then aged only 18.

Cheat: Teenager Amir is shown performing one of the no-balls that were found to be pre-determined when Pakistan played England at Lord's in August 2010

No ball: Asif deliberately oversteps the line with the last delivery of the tenth over during the test match

He said: ‘It appears that the corruption may have been more widespread than the defendants here before me, and may have permeated the team in earlier days.

‘If that is the case, you, as captain, perpetuated such an atmosphere of corruption and would be responsible for it and for the desire to use Majeed and his contacts to make money for yourself and others in the team.’

All three players were banned from playing for five years by the International Cricket Council in February.

The Pakistan Cricket Board said the conviction of the players was ‘a sad day for Pakistan cricket’.