ICC charges and suspends 'match-fixing' trio

Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir could face
 life bans from cricket after they were charged by the ICC.

News arrived just after nine o’clock on Thursday night that the three players at the centre of the spot-fixing scandal - Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif - had been charged with “alleged irregular behaviour” by the ICC. According to the rules, they will now be provisionally suspended and have 14 days to appeal.

The ICC’s belated intervention crashed through Pakistan’s feeble attempts at political self-defence. Much of the morning had been spent splitting hairs over whether the three players had been dropped, or suspended, or had even withdrawn under their own aegis.

Pakistan’s manager, Yawar Saeed, was careful not to use words like “suspended” or “banned” in his statement on Thursday, issued on the boundary’s edge before Pakistan’s match against Somerset at Taunton.

Later, in London, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner, explained their absence by saying that the three accused players had withdrawn themselves due to “mental torture”. Hasan then embarked on the provocative claim that the three players had been “set up.”

The outcome was that England got what they wanted, after the Lord’s three were removed from the tour. But for much of the day, it had been clear that Pakistan’s state machinery was doing everything it could to obfuscate that fact.

Employment law has its complexities, which is why Saeed would only confirm that Butt, Amir and Asif would play no further part and that three players would replace them in the squad for the NatWest 50-over series that begins a week today.

Yet the defiant note struck by the High Commissioner, who randomly raised Imran Khan’s victory over Ian Botham in the British courts, suggested that the Pakistani authorities were reacting with their hearts more than with their heads.

'Drop the trio or get dropped from the tour’ was always the gist of the message from the England and Wales Cricket Board. Though with the diplomatic sensitivities being rubbed raw, confused messages ensued with Pakistan’s High Commissioner resolutely standing by the trio in a bizarre press conference in London.

The tipping point for England seems to have been the comments Ijaz Butt, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, made at 9pm on Wednesday. In an interview with the BBC, Butt was adamant that the three would remain part of the tour, unless they were charged with an offence. Outraged that Pakistan could be such ungrateful guests, after the summer’s mercy mission that brought them Tests against Australia, the ECB’s top brass swung into action.

Forthright talks ensued through the night, between Butt, Giles Clarke and David Collier, the ECB’s chairman and chief executive, as well as Haroon Lorgat, the chief executive of the International Cricket Council. Nobody would officially confirm the precise content of the discussions but it would have been surprising if they had not pointed out what Pakistan cricket stood to lose by playing hardball over the players given the damning nature of the News of the World’s dossier.

Clarke would have been central to Thursday’s events, as he has been since Pakistan were cast into the wilderness by the increasing terrorist activity within their borders. As chairman of the ICC’s Pakistan task team, Clarke has set aside part of the English summer to give them a regular outlet for playing their home series, as witnessed by this summer’s Tests against Australia. Next year, there is a 10-day gap in the schedule that will not be filled by England matches, thereby allowing Pakistan to play a T20 and three ODIs against either India or Sri Lanka, both sides being present to play England.

Pakistan desperately need to play international cricket to fulfil their TV deal with Ten Sports and therefore survive. Threatening to remove that window would have been a powerful bargaining chip. Another would have been asking another country to take their place. But whatever the means of persuasion, the outcome was that Butt, Amir and Asif will play no further part in the tour - the only sensible option.

Not that Clarke was crowing when he delivered the ECB’s statement. “The England and Wales Cricket Board welcomes the announcement of the Pakistan Cricket Board’s squad for the NatWest T20 and NatWest ODI series. We look forward to an extremely competitive series, full of excellent cricket and we can assure cricket fans across the country that matches will be played in the most competitive spirit long associated with contests between England and Pakistan.”