Pakistan cricketers Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif were on Tuesday found guilty of taking bribes to fix part of a Test match against England in a case that prosecutors said revealed rampant corruption at the heart of international cricket. Former captain Butt, 27, and opening bowlers Asif, 28, and 19-year-old Mohammad Amir, who had admitted his part in the scam before the trial started, plotted to bowl deliberate no-balls at pre-arranged times during the Lord's Test in August last year. The men will be sentenced Wednesday with Butt and Asif facing up to seven years in jail or large fines. The three players have already been banned from playing by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for a minimum of five years. While former Pakistan players said Pakistan cricket had been shamed and that the guilty players “deserve no mercy”, ICC chief Haroon Lorgat hoped the verdict would deter others from being tempted to corrupt the sport. “We hope that this verdict is seen as a further warning to any individual who might, for whatever reason, be tempted to engage in corrupt activity within our sport,” Lorgat said in a statement. The spot-fixing plot was orchestrated by Butt and sports agent Mazhar Majeed, London's Southwark Crown Court was told. During the three-week trial, the jury heard how an undercover reporter recorded Majeed, 36, boasting that he could arrange for Pakistan players to rig games for money and how huge sums could be made for gambling syndicates. Majeed told Mazher Mahmood, an undercover journalist with the now defunct News of the World newspaper, that it would cost between 50,000 pounds ($81,000) and 80,000 pounds ($130,000) to fix “brackets”, a set period of a match on which punters bet. Butt and Asif denied any involvement in the plot. Amir admitted the same charges in September but his guilty plea could not be revealed until the end of the trial of his team mates.
