Pakistan demands cricket clean-up

ISLAMABAD, Nov 4 (AFP): A furious Pakistan demanded Friday that cricket makes good on promises to clean up corruption, declaring prison terms for three disgraced stars a wake-up call for a national sport in crisis. The spot-fixing scandal at the Lord's Test against England in August 2010 was taken personally in a country where cricket is an obsession and a respite from the bitter realities of Taliban attacks, recession and corruption. But when a British judge sentenced former captain Salman Butt to 30 months, fast bowler Mohammad Asif one year and Mohammad Aamer to six months, Pakistanis were left wondering if they were really watching sport -- or just greedy men lining their own pockets. "We are made mugs for getting up in the middle of the night, lunatics for investing deep emotional attachment and fools for devising our own strategies," wrote The Express Tribune newspaper. Millions of fans want to see Pakistan implement a 2012 deadline from the International Cricket Council (ICC) to end political appointments in cricket -- one of only three countries in the world where this still happens. The News, whose main headline was "Cooked" -- punning on the name of the judge, Jeremy Cooke -- said the sentences "should come as a big eye-opener". "There should be no tolerance for cheats and thieves. They belong not on the playing field but in prison. It remains to be seen whether our cricket officialdom has learnt some lessons from the fiasco," it wrote. Late Thursday, a few dozen local players and young men protested against the disgraced trio in the central city of Multan, setting alight portraits of the players and calling for a complete overhaul of Pakistani cricket. "Pakistan should completely start afresh with a new set of players because there are still question marks over a few of the others," Tariq Neem-ullah Khan, a former local cricket player and political activist told the gathering. The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), which has kept a low profile since new chairman Zaka Ashraf took over last week, said it was determined to eradicate corruption from the game after "a sad day for cricket in the country".