From hero to zero to hero again: tainted Amir to star in a movie

Young Pakistan fast bowler, suspended for his role in the spot-fixing scandal of 2010, is in need of money.

Mohammad Amir was at an impressionable age when he was suspended and jailed for spot-fixing in a Lord’s Test in 2010. Andrew Boyers / Action Images

KARACHI // Pakistani fast bowler Mohammad Amir is set to make his big-screen debut, he said on Thursday, as he struggles to make ends meet while serving a ban for spot-fixing.

Left-arm quick Amir was rated one of the best young talents in world cricket until his fall from grace in the notorious Lord’s Test against England in 2010.

Amir, then 19, was hit with a five-year ban from cricket after he was caught in a tabloid newspaper sting along with captain Salman Butt and pace partner Mohammad Asif agreeing to bowl no balls to order.

The ban is to end in September 2015, when Amir said he would go back to the sport.

“I have been offered the hero’s role in a Pakistan film and I have decided to take this opportunity, but once my ban is lifted my first priority will be cricket,” Amir said.

He said he took the role in Blind Love, offered by Pakistani director Faisal Bukhari, because he was struggling financially.

“For four years now I have not played cricket, which was my bread and butter, so I had to find ways and means to earn and this opportunity has come as a blessing,” Amir added.

On the cricket field Amir found fame quickly, leading Pakistan’s pace attack in their 2009 World Twenty20 win in England and earning comparisons with the great Wasim Akram.

A year later, he took seven wickets in his team’s remarkable win over Australia in the Leeds Test, levelling the neutral venue series 1-1.

That same year, he finished as man of the series despite Pakistan’s 3-1 defeat against England, taking 19 wickets in four matches.

But his stardom collapsed dramatically with the spot-fixing scandal during the fourth and final Test at Lord’s, which led to jail terms for him, Butt and Asif.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) last year launched a campaign to have some of the conditions of Amir’s ban eased.

Subsequently, the International Cricket Council formed a committee to look into the request and in October this year will review its code of conduct through which Amir, who spent three months in jail, and his co-conspirators were banned.

Asif is also to start shooting an Indian-Pakistani joint production India mein Lahore (Lahore in India).

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