Nasir Jamshed jailed for 17 months for involvement in spot-fixing scandal
Former Pakistan opener Nasir Jamshed has been sentenced to 17 months in jail for his involvement in the PSL spot-fixing scandal, where he’s believed to have conspired to bribe other cricketers. Jamshed, in 2019, was banned from playing cricket for 10 years by Pakistan’s Anti-corruption unit.
Nasir Jamshed, who last represented Pakistan in an international match in 2015, has been sentenced to 17 months in jail for his involvement in the spot-fixing scandal in the Pakistan Super League (PSL), where he conspired to bribe several cricketers to under-perform. Jamshed, in February 2018, encouraged batsmen to under-perform - by scoring deliberately slow - in return for a hefty sum of £30,000. The opener was found guilty of having committed the offence in the 2018 PSL match between Islamabad United and Peshawar Zalmi.
Along with Jamshed, two British nationals Yousef Anwar and Mohammed Ijaz were also arrested for their involvement in the scandal. The duo, however, copped harsher bans and were slapped with 30-month and 40-month bans respectively. All three of Jamshed, Anwar and Ijaz were jailed after admitting to the bribery offences.
"By far the most insidious consequence of these offences is the undermining of public confidence in the integrity of the sporting contest, not simply in the individual match directly affected but in the game of cricket generally," Judge Richard Mansell QC said during their sentencing at the Manchester Crown Court, reported Cricbuzz.
"Corruption of this kind has sadly been taking place in the game of cricket for a very long time.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.”
Last year, the 30-year-old opener was handed a 10-year ban from all forms of cricket by an anti-corruption tribunal of the Pakistan Cricket Board after he was found guilty of violating several clauses of PCB's Anti Corruption Code, including spot-fixing, ensuring for betting, failing to disclose offers of money, accepting offers of bribe and consenting to corruption.