Former Pakistan batsman Nasir Jamshed was jailed for 17 months on Friday after pleading guilty to conspiracy to bribe fellow cricketers as part of a Twenty20 spot-fixing scheme.
Jamshed, 30, was arrested alongside two other men -- Yousef Anwar, 36, and Mohammed Ijaz, 34 -- last February as part of a National Crime Agency probe into alleged spot-fixing. Anwar, from Hayes, west London, played the most prominent role in the plan, and was jailed for three years and four months. Ijaz, from Sheffield, northern England, was sentenced to two years and six months in custody.
Jamshed, who lives in Walsall, central England, had played Test, one-day and Twenty20 international cricket for Pakistan. All three admitted their roles in the conspiracy at a previous hearing. Sentencing them all at Manchester Crown Court in northwest England, judge Richard Mansell said Anwar and Ijaz had engaged in "sophisticated and organised criminal activity".
Jamshed was "vulnerable to succumbing to the temptation of financial reward", he added. "Corruption of this kind has sadly been taking place in the game of cricket for a very long time," he told the court. "If anything it has become worse due to the proliferation in the last decade of hugely popular televised international T20 tournaments in all the major cricketing nations, combined with a huge increase in online gambling.
"What makes cricket, and specifically these T20 tournaments in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, so vulnerable to corrupt practices, is the existence of a huge, largely unregulated online betting industry in the Indian sub-continent." Ian McConnell, NCA senior investigating officer, said after the hearing: "These men abused their privileged access to professional, international cricket to corrupt games, eroding public confidence for their own financial gain."
