"Sorry, but these sentences are preposterous".

That's how I reacted on Twitter this morning on hearing the sentences handed down in cricket's corruption trial.

Former Pakistan cricket captain Salman Butt (pictured and below centre) was jailed for 30 months for his part in a conspiracy to bowl deliberate no balls in a match last year between his team and England.


Bowlers Mohammad Asif (pictured below right) and Mohammad Amir (pictured below left) were sentenced to one year and six months respectively.

Intemperate as my instant reaction might have been, I now feel under an obligation to explain it - to myself as much as others.

And having thought it through while walking the dog, I think it boils down to this.

These sportsmen have been found guilty of an action, which, though corrupt, was highly unlikely to have a significant impact on the outcome of the game.

Yes, if England had won by 10 runs or fewer, then the no balls would certainly have been material; but the chances of that being the case were very low.

Indeed, I would think one of the factors that made this proposition so tempting was that it offered the possibility of making money for doing something which, in all probability, would have no meaningful impact on the match result.

Consider now the situation if in future an athlete - and we could be talking about any sport - was found guilty in England of actually throwing a contest in return for money.

Would we lock them up for 10, 15, 20 years (the sort of sentences one normally associates with violent crime)?

Or are we saying there is no moral distinction between acting corruptly in a manner calculated not to affect the result of the match (even if there is a small chance that it will) and doing so in a manner where determining the result is the whole point of the exercise?

To me, the two examples, though both distressing and wrong, seem fundamentally different.


I happened to be at Lord's on the day in question and witnessed a supremely exhilarating day of test cricket.

I simply don't believe the atmosphere of any sporting contest in which one side had been bribed to throw the match would be remotely comparable.

It is also worth underlining that this was a newspaper-conceived operation - under which an undercover News of the World reporter paid cricket agent Mazhar Majeed £150,000 for details of the timing of three no balls - as opposed to a real plot hatched by some illegal betting operator.

This makes no difference to our judgement of the players, but suggests that their exposure may not be much help in identifying and bringing to book those behind the gambling markets, which, we are told, pose such a threat to the integrity of sport.

Yes, if athletes are terrified of the consequences of being caught, then it may make fixes harder to orchestrate.

But I am sceptical that this is the way to solve the problem.

After all, if the Mr Bigs behind these gambling rings are as powerful and unscrupulous as we are given to believe then it will be within their means to intimidate, as well as reward, potential accomplices.

And I certainly would think hard before rushing to judge a cricketer who did something as trivial as bowling a no ball if s/he genuinely believed her family was under threat.

So, while not wishing to defend the cricketers, I do think these sentences are well over the top.

I hope the appeals system allows a rethink.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.