Hall of Shame has criminals now: Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif

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Cricket’s ‘Hall of Shame’ has its first criminals.

Salman Butt and Md Asif, held guilty of conspiring to corrupt cricket by a jury in an English court of law, have brought shame not only to themselves but to Pakistan cricket and the game itself.

To the lay public, a few innocuous looking no-balls bowled may seem a minor breach. What the tip of the iceberg of no-balls delivered to order points to is the hold the betting industry has on the players, in particular Pakistanis. The credibility hit the game has taken this time around won’t go away in a hurry.

As the saying goes in horse racing, it is jockeys who ‘stop’ horses, so too it’s the players who conspire with bookies and high rollers. But the game steadfastly refused to believe this for a long time. In its ostrich in the sand act, cricket kept putting the blame on the betting industry, particularly the Indian market since it has no legal sanction.

It took an elaborate sting operation to bring the truth out on the world stage. Ironically, that newspaper (News of The World) has ceased to exist, after being hauled over the coals for running phone taps. The player agent its sting reporter netted - Mazhar Majeed - proved to be the vital link to the cricket scandal.

Pakistan’s players, considered the pioneers in colluding with the betting market, had been at it for ages in international cricket.

A few careers that were ended at the start of the millennium after Delhi police leaked taped conversations between bookies and the Indian and South African Test captains seemed a face-saving exercise rather than a serious effort to get into the heart of the problem.

Spot-fixing became big in recent times as the betting market moved evolved from cricket results to spread betting on several segments of overs in order to increase its business and bring in a greater element of chance. That led to a free run for players to do some minor cheating and yet make big money.

That a suave, educated Pakistani captain, Salman Butt did all this makes sad reading. What makes it even more poignant is Butt’s wife Gul Hassan delivered their second son on Tuesday morning, barely an hour before the delivering of the verdict that is now certain to condemn the man far moiré than just his cricket career.

That a lay jury saw through the ‘game’ is a tribute to the prosecutors in what is a clear victory for British jurisprudence. This verdict would probably have never come, that too in such quick time, anywhere else in the cricket world.

The question is will cricket ever rise from all this like a Phoenix from the ashes.