England captain Alastair Cook said on Wednesday he wants all cricketers found guilty of match-fixing to be banned for life, but that he would be prepared to face Pakistan fast bowler Mohammad Amir.
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Given their relative ages – Compton will be 33 before he has another chance in a Test match, whatever happens this week – the stakes were not as high for Root.
“I look at the dismissal [in Durham, where he mistimed a leg-side nudge and was caught at cover] and it was a vehicle crash – it was very bad”, he said. “He was not technically deported from the United Kingdom like Butt and Asif in the spot-fixing case”. “But he has to allow himself to play the game of cricket not the occasion”.
Amir is poised to make a controversial return to Tests this summer – having made his comeback for Pakistan in the shorter formats earlier this year – and in a twist, his first match could be the scene of his crime.
A teenager at the time and one of world cricket´s undoubted rising stars, Amir was sent to jail by an English court and banned from all cricket worldwide for five years.
Broad’s solitary worldwide hundred came during the 2010 Lord’s Test with an innings of 169, a feat overshadowed when, on the final morning of the match, news broke of Butt, Amir and Asif being involved in a plot to bowl no-balls for money in a sting operation by the now defunct News of the World. “If anything, I’m maybe slightly complacent at times with the odd ball – sometimes, you get away with it and it goes unnoticed”.
Perera, who has played three Tests and 51 one-dayers, admitted he arrived in England undercooked, having barely trained before a series he did not expect to be involved in.
Joe Root has urged England to scare their opponents by dominating the ICC’s individual player rankings. Turning to Amir´s possible return, Broad said: “I think he´s served his time”.
“I like to think it is just coincidence”.
Injuries saw him added to the tour party and, with Milinda Siriwardana, the spinner, struggling with an ankle problem, Perera could come in for the third Test.
England backed themselves into a corner by picking Compton for this series even though he resembled a square peg in a round hole by the end of the winter and if he scores runs they will have no choice but to carry on picking him.
Broad believes that Steven Finn can find his form on his home ground after an indifferent return to the Test side. “There was a lively reaction to Ben Stokes´ dismissal previous year to Mitchell Starc, and it looked like a nasty atmosphere for a while”. “I could probably have had double the number of hundreds if you look at the amount of 50s”. “It´s certainly not devalued in my mind”.
“Hopefully if I get myself in a position like that this week I will really make it count and get a big score”.
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“The one-day series that followed was quite unpleasant, and the crowds reflected the bad feeling”.
