He will serve his term - for which, as with the others, he will be eligible for parole after completing half his time - at a young offenders' institute.
Less so for the other pair. They deserve a stint in the big house.
Asif, still only 28 and one of cricket's finest seamers at the time of the incident, is unlikely to return.
Already on a five-year ban from the International Cricket Council with the others, he's got previous form, having been detained at Dubai airport over drug smuggling and is banned from that new offshore home for Pakistani cricket.
In New Zealand two years ago, I found him lurking behind a grandstand at Dunedin's University Oval a couple of times having a surreptitious cigarette. On the basis that you take people as you find them, he was amiable and chatty.
Butt deserves most condemnation.
No fixing of this sort can take place without the direct involvement of the captain. After all, he decides who is bowling from which end, and when.
Sections of the English media were appalled when the charges first came to light as they were impressed by Butt as a captain because he spoke good English.
Butt is also greedy, manipulative and middle class, and that system is important in Pakistani cricket. If Butt ordered Amir to overstep - "and there's a few pounds in it for you, son" - the man-child's instinct would be to obey.
Several years ago a Pakistani captain strode imperiously out to the team bus at the Basin Reserve. A minute later up came the youngest member of the party struggling with his leader's cricket "coffin", and his own.
That's the way it works. Seniority and superiority counts.
What will these sentences do? Send a message, certainly, act as a deterrent, sure. Stamp it out? Forget it.
Sir Ronnie Flanagan, chairman of the ICC's Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, yesterday said corruption was "certainly not rampant in the world of cricket ... I think it is engaged in by a tiny number of people".
In relative terms, he may be right. But gambling is a multibillion-dollar business. The players know. The word gets about on who has been approached, who may have been tempted. And as long as the ICC sanctions tinpot, meaningless ODI tournaments the temptations will be strong.
So long as they are unable to infiltrate the conspiracists' groups - as the now-defunct News of the World did in this case - they won't get far.
As long as there's serious money to be made for bowling a timely wide or no ball, batting out a maiden, getting out for less than 10, weak or devious players will always be about.
Amir and Butt plan to appeal. Amir muttered darkly yesterday that he's got plenty to say about his two fellow crooks and will do so "at the right time and when I speak the whole world will listen to it".
This has been a dirty, sobering business for cricket.
