GENEVA: The appeals filed by disgraced former Pakistani cricketers Salman Butt and Muhammad Asif against spot-fixing bans had been rejected, the Court of Arbitration for Sport said on Wednesday.
“The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has dismissed the appeals filed by the Pakistani cricket players Muhammad Asif and Salman Butt against the decisions taken by the International Cricket Council Tribunal on 5 February 2011,” it said in a statement.
Butt received a 10-year ban, five years of which were suspended, and Asif was barred for seven years, with two suspended, following a probe of the deliberate bowling of no balls at a Test match in London in 2010.
“The appeal has been rejected,” Butt’s lawyer, Yasin Patel, told media from London, refusing to elaborate further. Butt is expected to speak to the press shortly in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
Butt and two of his fast bowlers, Muhammad Asif and Muhammad Amir, were all banned by the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 2011 after being found guilty of deliberately contriving no-balls in return for money in the Lord’s Test in England in 2010.
The now-defunct British newspaper the News of the World exposed the players in a sting operation involving their agent Mazhar Majeed who struck a deal for 150,000 pounds ($230,000) with an undercover reporter.
Butt, now 28, was banned for 10 years with the possibility of five suspended and all three were jailed in England in November 2011.
Amir, banned for five years, pleaded guilty in court and decided not to appeal against the ICC ban, while a decision on Asif’s appeal was still awaited.
The appeals of Butt and Asif were heard by a three-member CAS panel led by lawyer Graham Mew and accompanied by Romano Subiotto and Robert Reid.
