England vs Pakistan: Mohammad Amir return ignites incendiary rivalry

Fast bowler Mohammad Amir will be centre of attention when England's cricketers take on Pakistan at Lord's on Thursday.

It will be his first Test since serving a five-year ban and three-month prison sentence for [a] spot-fixing[a] at Lord's in 2010, the last time the two teams met.

Amir's return has generated plenty of debate and England captain Alastair Cook has warned him to expect a "reaction" from the crowd when he comes out. Even some of Amir's team-mates refused to practice with him when he was recalled to the international set up earlier this year.

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Former England skipper Kevin Pietersen, who played in the now-infamous Lord's Test, is adamant that there should be no way back for players like Amir.

"We are paid to play a sport we love and are damn lucky to lead the life of a professional cricketer," he writes in the Daily Telegraph. "To try and gain an advantage by taking drugs or devaluing your sport by being bribed is breaking the 11th and 12th commandments. There can be no way back."

The players knew how serious the story was when it broke, he adds: "The guys did not shake hands at the end of the Test. We felt empty when we took the wickets to win the match and did not celebrate... The relationship between the two teams was fractured because we all knew the damage it would do to cricket."

However, cricket legend Geoffrey Boycott, also writing in the Telegraph, says it is time to move on and that Amir, then 18, had been corrupted by his captain, Salman Butt.

"All of us who have played cricket are taught from an early age to follow the captain’s instructions... It would be very difficult for a young Pakistani boy, uneducated, at the start of his international career, to disobey his captain.

"If you believe in the rule of law and giving people a second chance then Amir should be allowed to play cricket and lead a normal life."

The match-fixing affair is just the most recent chapter in the "sulphurous" relationship between the England and Pakistan cricket teams, says Andy Bull in The Guardian. Each team has the "peculiar ability to offend the other's sensibilities", he writes.

There have been allegations of cheating, sniping from both sets of players and incidents such as Mike Gatting's showdown with umpire Shakoor Rana in 1987, England's twilight victory in 2000 and the abandoned Test of 2006, when Pakistan were incensed by allegations of ball-tampering. More worryingly, previous Pakistan tours of England have been marred by acts of racism involving fans.

"There's a hope – if not necessarily an expectation – that this summer will turn out to be one of the more uneventful encounters between the two, even with Mohammad Amir’s comeback," says Bull. "In Misbah-ul-Haq and Alastair Cook we have two cool old captains, neither keen to fan sparks into flames. But the truth is, in this incendiary contest, you just never know how it will go."