Why life bans when South African tourists only got 3 years?

However, calls for lifetime bans for any found guilty of spot-fixing or other misdemeanours need to be tempered by the treatment previously meted out to earlier cricketing "villains."

A lifetime ban may well be the appropriate sanction needed in the circumstances, but such an eventuality would look rather inconsistent when compared to the three-year suspensions handed out to the 15 English players who in 1982 took the krugerrands and toured apartheid South Africa.

I would argue that those players totally shamed themselves, their sport and their country.

However many of them were forgiven and allowed to play again for England - in the cases of Graham Gooch and Wayne Larkins - officiate as umpires (Peter Willey) or came to enjoy the status that comes with being a pundit (Geoffrey Boycott).

I do hope cricket is not about to apply double standards in this case.

Paul Simon
Hadleigh