CAS to give Asif, Butt verdicts over ban appeal within month

Islamabad: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) would take around month’s time to give its verdict on the appeals made by disgraced Pakistani cricketers Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif to overturn the ban they received by the International Cricket Council (ICC) in the spot fixing scandal. CAS said former Pakistan captain Butt is attending his appeal hearing on Friday to challenge a 10-year ban by the ICC.

The ICC suspended five years of the sanction. Butt’s teammate, fast bowler Asif, attended his appeal against a seven-year ban on Thursday. Butt, Asif and a third Pakistan player, Mohammad Amir, were found guilty in an English criminal trial of arranging to bowl no-balls for betting scams during an August 2010 test match and they served from three to seven months in prison. CAS said the same three-lawyer panel is hearing both appeals but judging them separately. Butt’s appearance comes a day after Pakistan fast bowler Mohammad Asif appeared before the court, in what he described to AFP as a “quite busy” day of hearings about the infamous Lord’s Test against England in 2010. The ICC banned butt, Asif and fellow paceman Mohammad Aamer in 2011 after being found guilty of corruption for deliberately contriving no balls to order in that match. ANI