Ijaz Butt: A Statement

Ijaz Butt today unveiled what he called 'incontrovertible evidence' that England players had been paid to lose games.

'It's quite clear for all to see,' he said. 'In the 1990s, an organisation called the England and Wales Cricket Board began paying players like Mike Atherton, Alec Stewart and Darren Gough huge sums every year to lose series after series. They did so quite openly. Australian people used to laugh at them because of it.'

'I can prove it all. The ECB then began using a character called Duncan Fletcher as a middleman between themselves and the players. Fletcher stayed in hotels with them night after night and he instructed them to begin winning. This they did, and men like Andrew Flintoff made even more money on and off the field. It's obvious. I'll be telling the ICC all about it.'

NB: In other sporting news, Butt revealed evidence that the famous and much loved drinker Ricky Hatton had been seen pursuing a career in boxing. 'For several months Hatton would cease being an alcoholic altogether, and these periods would conclude with him being involved in a boxing match. He tried to pull the wool over my eyes by drinking heavily again immediately afterwards, but I saw it. I keep my eye on all of sport...'

Who, what, when, where, how

Not much time to blog today, but here are two pieces worth reading, the first from Nick Harris at Sporting Intelligence on The News Of The World's approach to Yasir Hameed, and the other from Aniruddah Bahal in Open magazine on how the NOTW sting went down.

Sting theory

And so it's clear - the defence of the Pakistan Three will rest on the testing of the News Of The World evidence. It's the logical way to go for them, because, as blogged here, the burden of proof for a newspaper story is different to that required to take away someone's ability to earn a living, and its remedies are civil rather than criminal.

As Rob Bagchi writes today, the NOTW has a patchy record in terms of its stings. They look good in the paper but then don't always stand up. There is often an element of entrapment about them that can be exploited by those entrapped.

Sunday will be a big day. The NOTW almost always hold something back for a second week. As usual they will have one aim: to sell newspapers. Everything else, from the fate of Mohammed Amir to the impact on cricket, is simply collateral damage in their endless war.

The success of the ICC and ACSU in identifying any spot fixing will depend entirely on their ability to wrench the story away from the newspapers and produce their own evidence, something far harder to do.

Sigh of relief

Relax everyone. Ijaz Butt's here to sort it all out.

Feeling better yet?

News of the Screwed

The world does not really require any more comment on spot fixing, so relax - there will be none here. But there is one small element of the story that is worth mentioning.

On 2 and 9 May 2010, the News Of The World, the paper that ran Sunday's allegations, exposed John Higgins, a champion snooker player, as a match-fixer too. The stories were accompanied by a video, not dissimilar to Sunday's, that showed Higgins and his manager agreeing to fix the outcome of a snooker match. Higgins was suspended by the WPBSA, snooker's governing body. Snooker is another sport that has been haunted by fixing, and its existence as a revenue-generating TV machine is under far greater threat than cricket's.

Yet the Higgins case, superficially a damning one, has not yet stood up to examination. An investigation led by the website Sporting Intelligence raised some serious questions about the veracity of the video and the story itself. Higgins will face a disciplinary hearing in September, and he maintains his innocence.

His case is unconnected to the Pakistan one, and yet there is a gap between the requirements of a newspaper story and a proven case of spot-fixing in cricket. The News Of The World is concerned with selling newspapers, not helping cricket solve its problems. Another story is expected next Sunday, perhaps concerning the Australia-Pakistan Test in Sydney last winter.

The evidence seems far firmer with regard to Pakistan than it does with Higgins, and perhaps it is. But it might be worth not chucking any more tomatoes at donkeys until it's been properly interrogated.

Life is sweet, Boom Boom is king

Whatever god you believe in, whichever benign universal force you fancy, offer up thanks, because they've come up trumps for you today: Shahid Afridi is captain of Pakistan. And they're over here for the summer.

Shahid's coming out of a four-year Test retirement. He's just kicked ass at the Commission Enquiry. His first job? Check that Shoaib Ahktar has recovered sufficiently from genital warts, persuade Younis Khan and Shoaib Malik out of retirement, ignore all the bans, retain Kamran Akmal and put together a 35 man provisional squad that contains at least four previous captains. He's graciously allowing PCB chairman Ijaz Butt to kiss his backside while he does so. The man's cleaning house. Shahid means business. He might even be able to persuade Mohammad Asif to smuggle his M16 through customs.

This is how to look cool while Ijaz tells the world why he loves you. Shahid is coming. Rejoice. The summer just got better.