Mohammad Amir released from jail

Mohammad Amir has been in jail since November 3 last year © Getty Images

Mohammad Amir, the Pakistan fast bowler, has been released from Portland Young Offenders Institution in Dorset after serving half of a six-month sentence for his part in a spot-fixing scam.

Amir is expected to spend the next few weeks in London before returning to his native Pakistan. He will meet his lawyers to draw up an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against the five-year ban imposed on him by the International Cricket Council.

He has a visa to stay in England until the end of March and there is no suggestion that he risks the threat of deportation.

An ICC tribunal banned Amir for five years in February last year, his team-mate Mohammad Asif was given a seven-year ban, with two years suspended, and the captain, Salman Butt, was banned for ten years, five suspended. Shortly after the decision Amir announced his intent to appeal the decision to the CAS, an arbitration body set up to settle disputes relating to sport.

Amir and his two team-mates were sentenced in November 2011 at Southwark Crown Court of conspiracy to accept corrupt payments and conspiracy to cheat at gambling after a plot was uncovered in a News of the World sting operation to bowl deliberate no-balls in a Test against England in 2010. Amir and Butt lost an appeal against the sentence in November in the Court of Appeal in London.

The judge, Mr Justice Cooke, ruled at Southwark Crown Court that the affair was "so serious that only imprisonment will suffice". Butt was sentenced to two and a half years, Asif was jailed for one year, and Amir for six months. Mazhar Majeed, the players' agent, received a sentence of two years eight months. Under the terms of UK law, all were eligible for release after serving half their sentences.

Majeed had boasted to undercover reporters that he could arrange for Pakistan cricketers to rig elements of games for money. He was surreptitiously filmed accepting £150,000 in cash from a journalist.

Mr Justice Cooke said: "'It's not cricket' was an adage. It is the insidious effect of your actions on professional cricket and the followers of it which make the offences so serious."

Amir apologised through his lawyer for his involvement in spot-fixing, stating: "I want to apologise to all in Pakistan and all others to whom cricket is important. I did the wrong thing. I was trapped, because of my stupidity. I panicked."

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, said in the Court of Appeal that the corruption had been "carefully prepared" and the cricketers had betrayed their team, their country, their sport and the "followers of the game throughout the world". Lord Judge accepted that Amir's guilty plea should be counted in his favour.

Amir seemed to contravene his playing ban last summer by appearing for Addington 1743 Cricket Club in the Surrey League. He insisted that he had been told it was only a friendly and that he had made an innocent mistake. It was later reported that the ICC had decided to let Amir off with a warning. © ESPN EMEA Ltd.

Butt and Amir have appeals dismissed

The Lord Chief Justice has rejected the appeals of Salman Butt and Mohammad Amir against their sentences in the spot-fixing case.

The Crown Court had, on November 3, given Butt a two-and-a-half year jail term after finding him guilty of conspiracy to cheat and conspiracy to accept corrupt payments based on orchestrating no-balls against England, at Lord's, in 2010. Amir was given two six-month sentences under the same charges, to run concurrently, and is currently in detention at a young offenders' institute.

Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, called the appeal against Butt's sentence "unarguable" while regarding Amir he said: "This prodigious talent has been lost to cricket for some years. Cricket will be the poorer for it. But he was not so young that he did not appreciate what he was doing.

"The cricketers betrayed their team, their country, the sport that had given them their distinction and all the world followers of the game," Lord Judge said. "The reality is that all the enjoyment of watching cricket will be destroyed if this was allowed to continue."

The defence team for Butt had argued that the sentence was too severe and outlined three types of match fixing: the outcome of the game, passages of play and spot-fixing and argued that Butt was involved in the least severe of the three.

Amir's defence team had argued that his six-month sentence should be downgraded to a suspended term and that he should have been able to walk free.

"Butt was undoubtedly the most involved," said Lord Judge, and a "malign influence". His duty as captain was to "stop" any whiff of corruption. He added that Justice Cooke, who presided over the original case, was fully entitled to call Butt the "orchestrator."

More to follow

Butt gets 2 years 6 months in jail, Asif gets 1 year, Amir six months

Salman Butt, his former team-mates and their agent have all been handed jail terms © Associated Press

Salman Butt, the former Pakistan captain, has been sentenced to two years and six months in jail for his role in the spot-fixing case; Mohammad Asif has got a one-year jail sentence and Mohammad Amir six months. Mazhar Majeed, the players' agent, has been sentenced to two years and eight months.

The sentences were handed down in Southwark Crown Court on Thursday morning, bringing the curtains down on one of sport's most sordid and shameful scandals. The sentences are open to appeal - though it is not yet clear whether any of the parties will do so - and can be reduced to half the term for good behaviour.

The incarceration will begin immediately, with the players - who had all come to court with bags - due to be led into prison straight from the courtroom. It seems, in Amir's case, that he will be sent to a young offenders' detention centre instead of jail.

In Lahore, the families of the convicted players were stunned by the sentences. Amir's father said the Pakistan government should have helped his son. His brother Saleem said: "He is a kid, he can't understand things. These six months are a lot for a boy who is immature."

Butt's father Zulfiqar was more aggressive, saying his son was innocent. "Our own friends conspired against us," he said. "You can check our bank balance, we haven't even been able to build our own house."

The judge began proceedings with his summation of the case of each of the four found guilty, reading out their sentences one at a time, and his initial words suggested jail terms for all four guilty.

"Now, when people look back at a surprising event in a game or a surprising result or ever in the future there are surprising results, followers of the game who have paid to watch cricket or who have watched cricket on TV will wonder whether there has been a fix or what they have watched was natural."

"It's clear you were the orchestrator of these matters," Justice Cooke told Butt. "You had to be to make sure these two bowlers were bowling at the time of the fix."

To Asif he said: "Whilst no money was found in your possession, it's clear that you conspired to bowl a no-ball. There's no evidence on your part of prior fixing but it's hard to see that this could have been an isolated incident."

There were frantic scenes in and around courtroom number four on Thursday morning at Southwark Crown Court, as media and members of the public crammed to witness the sentencing.

The guilty entered the court last after a crazy scrummage for seats by media workers and public. Even regular court reporters commented that they had not seen such desperation in court to be present for sentencing of a trial.

Butt and Asif were found guilty of conspiracy to cheat and conspiracy to accept corrupt payments by a jury on Tuesday, while Majeed and Amir pleaded guilty at a pre-trial in September. It all followed the now infamous three pre-determined no-balls that were delivered in the Lord's Test match last year, two by Amir and one by Asif, orchestrated by Butt and arranged by Majeed. © ESPN EMEA Ltd.