THE TRIAL OF Pakistani international cricketers Salman Butt and Mazhar Majeed for cheating at gambling and the acceptance of corrupt payments continued today, with the court hearing undercover recordings of player agent Mazhar Majeed.
The recordings, made by Mazhar Mahmood, then a journalist for the News of the World, appear to contain what amounts to a lengthy and incriminating explanation from Majeed of his long-term involvement in match-fixing, the Guardian’s Matt Scott reports.
The agent, believing himself at the time to be speaking with an Indian businessman interested in securing the services of prominent Pakistani players, described the salary of the nation’s players as “a joke” and discussed the signals by which Asif could communicate his intentions mid-over.
He also went into some detail regarding the price of achieving certain outcomes.
“For brackets we charge anything from £50,000 to £80,000… For results, Twenty20 is about £400,000. A Test match, depending on the duration, is £1m. We won’t be doing any results for a few games because we want Butt to be captain long term. No‑balls are not a problem because you can’t make much money from that.”
Strangely, Majeed boasted of his close ties to Arsenal Football Club, Brad Pitt, Geoffrey Boycott and Phil Tufnell.
