Well, there are plenty of odd ways to get a British passport…claiming to be gay is currently in vogue – not only does it get you asylum but improves your odds of a job at the BBC. Going on the run for a year works splendidly, as does being a pirate (a British tradition sadly in decline since Elizabethan times) and the internationally recognised human right to a £2m house with nice neighbours.

Never figured cheating at cricket was on the list. For we learn that cheating bastard* Mohammad Asif is looking at how to stay in Britain. He fears that gangs of irate bookmakers will break his legs for getting caught with his hand in the scorebox.

From the Daily Mailograph:

The Pakistan bowler held a 35-minute meeting with an immigration lawyer last Friday …. and said he feared the allegations of fixing certain events in a recent Test match against England could make him the target of dangerous criminal gangs linked to the illegal betting underworld.

You did the crime, now do the time, matey. Or watch your back. You’re not going to get any sympathy from this blogger if a bookmaker from Bombay, Lahore or Colombo sticks your head on a spike. Upside down.

Now that Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer have been charged and suspended, three cricketers have so far been well and truly skewered. And this is despite the locals playing the all too predicable race card. Emboldened by not being cast as the villain in the style of Daryl Hair‘s martyrdom it looks as though cricket authorities are making further inroads into the underbelly of sleaze. Wahab Riaz is next in line to have his collar felt.

Stop messing around and throw the whole damn country out of international cricket. Forever.

+++++RESULTS+++++RESULTS+++++
England have beaten Pakistan by 5 wickets at Chester-le-Street tomorrow

* Please insert ‘allegedly’ at all appropriate moments to keep the sharks lawyers at bay. Example “…the cheating alleged bastard…”