LONDON : A sports agent and a cricketer lost their Court of Appeal challenges against match-fixing convictions on Thursday.
Mazhar Majeed, 36, from Croydon, south London, and former Essex player Mervyn Westfield - the first county cricketer in England to be prosecuted for spot-fixing - were jailed in separate cases.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge and two other judges in London, who had been urged to overturn their convictions, rejected their appeals.
Dismissing the challenges, Lord Judge stressed that for the health and survival of cricket as a truly competitive sport, corruption "must be eradicated".
Both appeals were heard together on May 24 as they raised the same point of law.
The men pleaded guilty following pre-trial argument and rulings, but their conviction challenges centred on the correct interpretation of gambling and betting legislation.
Majeed was sentenced in November to two years and eight months after pleading guilty to conspiracy to cheat and conspiracy to make corrupt payments.
Westfield, now 24, from Chelmsford, Essex, was sentenced to four months in prison at the Old Bailey in February and has since been released.
He pleaded guilty to one count of accepting or obtaining a corrupt payment to bowl in a way that would allow the scoring of runs.
He was accused of being paid GBP6,000 to bowl so that a specific number of runs would be chalked up in the first over of a match between Durham and Essex in September 2009.
As well as the jail sentence, Westfield was the subject of a confiscation order for GBP6,000.
In the case involving Majeed, three Pakistan cricketers also received custodial sentences at London's Southwark Crown Court over a scandal that rocked world sport.
Ex-Test captain Salman Butt was jailed for two-and--half years for his role as the "orchestrator" of a plot to bowl deliberate no-balls in the 2010 Lord's Test against England.
Mohammad Asif, the former world number two Test bowler, was sentenced to 12 months. Mohammad Amir, who had been tipped to become one of the all-time great fast bowlers, was sentenced to six months.
