The people of Taunton have spoken. The people of Hove will get their chance in the coming days. But the first real test of how the cricketing public in England views the return of Mohammad Amir will come on Thursday.
That’s when England take on Pakistan in the first match of the Investec Series at Lord’s and the 24-year-old left-arm swing bowler returns to the scene of the crime against cricket he, his team-mate Mohammad Asif and their captain Salman Butt committed six years ago.
They believed they were perpetrating a spot-fixing scam in the final Test of the 2010 series, but it turned out to be a newspaper sting that resulted in him receiving a five-year ban from all cricket and a six-month jail sentence.
When Amir marked out his run-up against Somerset at the County Ground this week, the announcement of his name to the small gathering on the PA was marked with a smattering of applause.
After Marcus Trescothick had become one of three victims of Amir’s undimmed ability to swing the ball late, he spoke for those who had put their hands together when he said: “Obviously he was nervous dealing with coming back and playing first-class cricket again.
“But I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. Let’s just get on and play the game. What’s done is done.”
Others have been less forgiving.
Back in January, on his first international tour since serving his ban, when Amir came on to bowl in the third T20 international between Pakistan and New Zealand in Wellington, another PA man offered a rather different greeting – the sound of a cash register going kerr-ching.
England captain Alastair Cook recently reiterated his call for cheats to be banned for life and while he stressed: “(Amir) served his time and he is absolutely right to come back,” he not only warned of the possibility of a hostile response to his Test return, his choice of words seemed to suggest some sympathy with that idea.
“I am sure there will be a reaction and that is right,” said Cook. “When you do something like that, there are more consequences that just the punishment.”
The arguments for and against Amir’s return have been made thoroughly and in detail, and two former England captains, Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain, rehearsed them last week after Sky had screened Atherton’s face-to-face interview with the player.
While accepting Amir “made a bad mistake and deserves some punishment”, and pointing out that five years out of the game and going to jail is a “pretty heavy punishment”, Atherton offered mitigating circumstances that made him believe Amir deserved a second chance.
First, that the whole thing had been set up by a paper creating a crime where none would otherwise have existed. Second, and rather more persuasively, that as “the youngest, most vulnerable player in the team”, Amir was leaned on by a captain he considered a hero.
Hussain was less supportive, not only because, “he (Amir) knew exactly what he was doing”, but also because of the absolute necessity to try to preserve the credibility of the sport as a fair contest.
“Because of spot-fixing and match- fixing you sit there and question everything,” said Hussain.
“Ridiculous things happen in cricket and you can’t have a situation where you have to think: ‘Why is that happening? Is it because of brilliance or because someone is making a bit of money out of this?’”
Indeed, a warning bell sounded loud and clear when he reminded us of the response of another ex-England skipper Michael Vaughan to Pakistan’s collapse during the third ODI against England in Sharjah last November.
“Three run-outs and a few iffy shots from Pakistan,” tweeted Vaughan. “They must think we are stupid.”
But he also made what many consider the remark he and Amir’s supporters must hope offers everyone else a compass with which to navigate a way through the moral maze we are about to enter.
“Don’t judge people until you’ve walked in their shoes,” he said. “Put yourself in that position, an 18-year-old getting into the side and your hero, Salman Butt, someone you’ve looked up to all your life, comes up to you and says, ‘You do this and if you don’t do it you’ll be in big trouble.”
“Given that situation,” continued Hussain, “he made one wrong decision. Should he pay for that for the rest of his career? I don’t think so.”
Those pleas, it must be said, fell on largely deaf ears among Sky’s viewing public this week.
“Regardless of age, he knew what he was doing and the consequences,” said one. “Once a cheat always a cheat,” said another, “he’s robbing a living.”
And there was hardly any traffic travelling in the opposite direction.
It is entirely possible that different crowds at different Test grounds in different parts of the country will come up with differing verdicts, though we will know what Lord’s thinks of the return of the prodigal Amir soon enough.
But, while we are going all Biblical, Hussain’s message is: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” and it is not the worst place to start.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday July 8 2016
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