Pakistan bowler Kaneria accused in fixing plot

LONDON (AP) — A judge sentencing an English cricketer to jail on Friday accused Pakistan leg-spinner Danish Kaneria of pressuring teammates at county side Essex to fix matches.

Kaneria was cleared by police of wrongdoing, but the British judge was critical of his role in bowler Mervyn Westfield becoming the first English cricketer to be jailed for on-field corruption.

"Kaneria told you of the possibility of your making large amounts of money for conceding a certain number of runs in a particular over bowled by you in a match," judge Anthony Morris said. "I accept that such an approach was made to you by Kaneria."

Kaneria was warned in 2008 by the International Cricket Council over his connections with a bookmaker involved in illegal betting markets.

"In addition, he had made similar approaches to other Essex players who had laughed them off as a joke," Morris said at the Old Bailey in London. "At first you (Westfield) ignored Kaneria's approach, but similar approaches were made to you on a number of occasions after that until you felt under some pressure to agree."

The 23-year-old Westfield, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to four months in prison and suspended by the English and Wales Cricket Board.

The plot which developed after a meeting at Kaneria's home in Aug. 2009 led to Westfield accepting 6,000 pounds ($9,500) to intentionally concede runs during a 40-over English county match against Durham the following month, which was televised globally.

Kaneria was to receive 4,000 pounds ($6,300) for facilitating the fixing, the judge said Westfield told former teammate Tony Palladino.

The 31-year-old Kaneria, Pakistan's most successful test spinner with 261 wickets in 61 matches, has been suspended by the Pakistan Cricket Board since 2010. He continues to protest his innocence.

"Such allegations have no strength and it holds no water," lawyer Farogh Naseem told The Associated Press by telephone. "I fail to understand when British police cleared Danish, when ICC cleared Danish, then why now these allegations against him?"

Kaneria, who first joined Essex in 2005, was arrested in connection with the case but later released without charge.

"Kaneria and his associates targeted Westfield," Westfield's lawyer Mark Milliken-Smith said. "Westfield was on the verge of the squad, more susceptible for that reason. Less likely perhaps to be able to say no to the club's international star, his future with the club uncertain."

The court was told that other Essex players heard Kaneria mentioning spot-fixing but dismissed what he was saying as "banter".

"There's ways of making money, you don't have to lose a game," former Essex batsman Varun Chopra recalled Kaneria telling him in an Aug. 2009 phone call.

Westfield is the fourth cricketer in four months to be sent to a British jail for fixing. Pakistan cricketers Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were jailed in November for fixing part of a test match against England in 2010.

"In that case, bowlers agreed deliberately to bowl no balls. That is something over which they would have had control," Morris said while sentencing Westfield. "In the present case you were to concede a minimum number of runs in an over.

"This is to an extent dependent on the skill of the batsmen in scoring runs and of the fielders in preventing them doing so and is therefore more difficult to guarantee."

Morris told Westfield that "no legal domestic betting market appears to have been compromised by your corrupt agreement."

"The inescapable inference is that the person who made the corrupt payment must have taken advantage of this information by seeking to influence a legal overseas market or an illegal market in this country or overseas," Morris said.

Morris described the scam as a betrayal of trust.

"If, because of corrupt payments, it cannot be guaranteed that every player will play to the best of his ability, the reality is that the enjoyment of many millions of people around the world who watch cricket, whether on television or at cricket grounds, will be destroyed," he said.

The International Cricket Council hopes the jail sentence will serve as a "deterrent to anyone who is tempted to sully the good name of cricket."

"We will follow every possible avenue to ensure the integrity of cricket is protected," ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat said.