CRICKET
An attacking field
will Pakistan’s england tour be
controversial yet again ?
A
fter the debauched events of the preceding Test
tours of England in 2006 and 2010, the entire
country will be praying for a controversy-free series for Pakistan against Alastair Cook’s side when the
four-match rubber starts next month. Lord’s will be under spotlight at the start of the series on July 14 because
it was at this hallowed venue that the infamous spot-fixing incident caused mayhem in the cricketing world on
August 29, 2010. The attention had overnight shifted
from the world record partnership between Jonathon
Trott and Stuart Broad, who engineered an England
fight-back by adding 332 after the hosts had been reduced to 102-7 in their only innings. Suddenly a sleepy
Sunday afternoon was fully awake as the (now defunct)
News of the World tabloid narrated the previous night’s
tale of spot-fixing in which the Pakistan captain Salman
Butt, Mohammad Asif and a teenaged Mohammad Amir
were implicated for delivering no-balls in return for huge
sums of money from a UK-based Pakistani agent
Mazhar Majeed. England condemned Pakistan to the
latter’s heaviest Test defeat (innings and 225 runs) to
win the series 3-1 that same Sunday, but it did little to
cheer up the host team as the focus was now firmly on
the story of another corruption tarnishing the gentleman’s sport of cricket after undercover News of the
World reporters secretly videotaped Mazhar accepting
money and informing the reporters that Asif and Amir
would deliberately bowl no balls at specific points in an
over. Mazhar was a known figure to a number of Pakistani players and along with his brother Azhar helped
them get various contracts, ranging from club deals to
endorsement and kits. Mazhar — who was arrested by
Scotland Yard the same evening the story appeared on
suspicion of bribing Salman, Asif and Amir — was also
spotted during the Sydney Test at the start of 2010. It
was the same match which Pakistan lost to Australia in
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