The international cricket community must do all it can to ensure Mohammad Amir is not lost to the game. Yes, the same Mohammad Amir who has pleaded guilty to conspiring to cheat and conspiring to accept corrupt payments as a result of spot-fixing while playing international cricket for Pakistan - and was tonight given a six-month jail sentence by a British judge.

Do I think Amir is a cheat? Yes. Do I think he should face the legal consequences of his actions? Of course. Should he face sanctions from cricket's authorities? Absolutely.

But do I think he should be banished from the game forever? No.

The judicial system, as witnessed simultaneously by the Crown Prosecution Service and the International Cricket Council, serves many purposes.

Punishment is the most obvious facet. Amir should be sanctioned as a consequence of the damage of his actions to both the cricket community and the wider community he attempted to defraud. His punishment should also serve as retribution, to assuage community rage. Any punitive measures should also act as a deterrent to reduce the likelihood of others committing similar transgressions; an obvious flaw in previous comparable scenarios.

In the period between Amir's judgement and sentencing it is natural these thoughts should dominate. It is important therefore to also acknowledge and counterbalance the legitimate role in the justice system for rehabilitation.

Amir was barely 18 when he conspired to spot-fix during a Test match. Is he to suffer interminably for a teenage mistake? I hope we are all more compassionate than to want that.

Amir's QC put forward a 19-page document mitigating for his client's behaviour. The narrative is predictable. It was a first offence, a one-off, the result of significant pressure imposed by older, more powerful colleagues on an impressionable, naïve prodigy yet to come to terms with the ways of the world.

I don't believe it chapter and verse but I do support the principal assertion that Amir would not have found himself in this predicament were it not for more senior figures. For this, he deserves a degree of clemency.

Further distinction should be made between Amir and his co-conspirators for his, albeit too late, admission of guilt. Once the long arm of the law got involved, Amir was contrite and without artifice - unlike Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif, both of whom denied culpability to the end.

Most importantly of all, Amir should be spared the most draconian of punishments because he can do much more good for cricket and his homeland of Pakistan breaking toes with inswinging yorkers than breaking rocks on a chain-gang.

Amir is young enough to serve a requisite sentence yet return to the game its poster boy for avoiding the pitfalls of cricket's underbelly. As with Ben Cousins in the AFL or Marion Jones in sprinting, the warning message is strongest when it is told from experience.

The young paceman is also talented enough to be part of his country's cricketing future. Don't forget that despite Amir's involvement in these spot-fixes he remained the pre-eminent talent of that tour of England, becoming the youngest bowler to reach 50 Test wickets in the process. No doubt he made a costly mistake but is it so heinous he deserves to pay for it with the rest of his career? By comparison, the insinuations that Pakistani players deliberately underperformed en masse to depose Shahid Afridi from the captaincy, are to me, of at least equivalent damage to the game's integrity.

Amir is currently eight months into a five-year ICC ban from all forms of cricket. He is now awaiting what could be up to a seven-year prison sentence. It is safe to assume neither Butt nor Asif will ever feature on a scorecard of note again, and, if this trial is to be believed, neither deserves much sympathy for the curtailment of their careers.

For me, however, the youngest conspirator is different and every effort should be made to ensure his rare talent is not wasted because he was led astray as a teenager.