vallierojas: Jurors shown secretly filmed footage

Friday, October 7, 2011

Jurors shown secretly filmed footage

Captain's agent seen at hotel telling undercover journalist on eve of Test match when to expect no-balls from bowler

Video of the moment Salman Butt's agent, Mazhar Majeed, accepted a briefcase brimming with �50 notes has been shown to jurors on the second day of the Pakistan cricketers' "spot-fixing" trial.

The secretly filmed footage was shot in a London hotel room on the evening before the fourth Test opened between Pakistan and England at Lord's in August last year.

It shows Majeed telling an undercover journalist posing as the representative of a far east gambling syndicate precisely when to expect no-balls from opening bowler Mohammad Asif and fast bowler Mohammad Amir. Majeed is shown counting the money: �140,000.

"To show we are serious I'm going to give you three no-balls," said Majeed in the video. "No-balls are the easiest and clearest. The timing you're coming in is perfect because the one-day and Twenty20s are about to start and you're going to make a hell of a lot of money."

In the video Majeed says Amir would bowl a no-ball with the first delivery of the third over. He further explains that Amir would bowl a second no-ball, signalled by a change of his approach from over to round the wicket. Asif, he adds, would bowl a no-ball in his last delivery of the 10th over.

Butt, Pakistan's former captain, and Asif are on trial at Southwark crown court for allegedly accepting corrupt payments and cheating at gambling. The offences carry maximum five- and two-year sentences respectively. Both men deny the charges. Majeed and Amir have also been charged with the same offences but are not currently in the dock ? the jury has been told to infer "nothing sinister" from their absence.

The prosecution further submitted to the court that the "telling triangulation" of telephone calls and texts that followed pointed to a conspiracy between Majeed, Butt, Asif and Amir to fix events at Lord's.

Prosecutor Aftab Jafferjee stressed how strange it was that, on the eve of an important match, the last of Majeed's several calls to Amir was made at 1.27am.

"It does not require much imagination to work out why these calls are being made," Jafferjee contended.

"Money had been received ? �140,000 ? and each of the three Pakistan players at the heart of the arrangement were being contacted."

Jafferjee pointed out that the serial numbers of every note in the �140,000 batch were recorded in advance, and that police had found exactly corresponding notes in Butt and Amir's hotel rooms.

Butt, whose 27th birthday it is on Friday, held �2,500 in �50 notes that Majeed had received from the journalist; Amir �1,500 apparently from the same source.

Jurors were also shown footage of the moments when the two bowlers, Asif and Amir, delivered their allegedly pre-arranged no-balls, one of which Jafferjee described as "a no-ball no umpire in the world could fail to give".

Amir was in the midst of a purple spell ? at one stage he took three wickets in the space of nine balls in a double-wicket maiden and another wicket maiden ? when, seconds before one of the controversial deliveries, Butt converses with him. "We can't lipread," Jafferjee told the court. "We don't need to. It was plain that the youngster was bound to be concerned.

"However, what does a youngster do in relation to a no-ball pre-arranged the night before, when on the following day he is in such cracking form? Answer: he simply follows the instructions of his captain."

Earlier in the day, the court heard how Majeed had listed new names, alongside those of Amir, Butt and Asif, of players he termed "his boys".

These were the Akmal brothers, Wahab Riaz and Imran Farhat, though the latter was described as "not being completely in the circle".

The case continues.

Matt Scott