‘Amir confessed to spot-fixing after Afridi slapped him’

Mohammad Amir confessed to spot-fixing only after then ODI captain Shahid Afridi had slapped him, former all-rounder Abdul Razzaq has claimed.

“He [Afridi] told me to leave the room and after a while, I heard the sound of a slap. Later, Amir told the whole truth,” Razzaq said while speaking to a private media outlet on Wednesday.

Spilling the beans on Pakistan’s ill-fated tour of England in 2010, a scandal that tarnished the image of Pakistan cricket, Razzaq also said that Salman Butt was involved in corruption much before the saga.

“Butt was deliberately getting out and playing dot balls much before the scandal broke out in England,” the former all-rounder said, also blaming the then PCB management for “bringing a bad name to Pakistan cricket”.

Butt, Amir and Muhammad Asif were the three players eventually banned for a minimum of five years in early 2011 by the ICC’s anti-corruption tribunal after they were first suspended in September 2010.

All three have now returned to playing cricket after completing their five-year bans. But only Amir has been picked for the national team and is currently competing in the World Cup.