Chris Cairns case: Brendon McCullum asked to become involved in former team-mate's 'spot-fixing' racket and failed to alert authorities

McCullum is not expected to face action by the ICC and ACSU over the failure to report Cairns' approaches

New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum (Getty Images)

New Zealand’s current cricket captain Brendon McCullum was asked several times by former team mate and ‘idol’ Chris Cairns, to get involved in his ‘spot-fixing’ racket while playing in the Indian Cricket League, and McCullum failed to report these approaches to the authorities, according to his own testimony in court in London.

Cairns, a towering figure in New Zealand’s recent cricketing history, is on trial in London for perjury and perverting the court of justice, after successfully suing Indian Premier League founding chief Lalit Modi suing for libel, who had accused him of being a match fixer on Twitter.

Both he, and his lawyer at the time Andrew Fitch-Holland, now face charges, having claimed to have “never, ever cheated at cricket.”

McCullum is one of seven New Zealand cricketers expected to testify against Cairns, all of whom claim he sought to recruit them to various match-fixing and spot-fixing schemes. McCullum was in his hotel room in 2008, the night before the first ever Indian Premier League match, when he would open the batting for his team, the Kolkata Knight Riders.

“I was having a drink with Ricky Ponting when I had a phone call from Chris Cairns,” he said.

I was expecting something legitimate

&#13; <p>Brendon McCullum, New Zealand captain</p>&#13;

“He said he had a business proposition for me. He sent a car for me and gave me his room number. We had a bottle of wine and then ordered a curry from room service. I was expecting something legitimate. He asked me if I knew anything about spot-fixing in cricket. I had heard of it but wasn't sure what it was. My understanding was that it involved manipulating a period of the game rather than the result. I said I didn't know what it was.

“He pulled out a paper and pen and started to go through periods of the game with diagrams. To underperform, it's not playing an honest game of cricket. His drawings were quite thorough.

“I was shocked. I sort of thought he may have been joking but was then quickly aware he wasn't joking. He said everyone else was doing it in world cricket. He said he couldn't ask [other New Zealand cricketers] Daniel Vettori and Jacob Oram because they ‘wouldn't have the balls’ to do it. He said that he had a team working for him, Lou Vincent and Daryl Tuffey. I wouldn't say I was close to them but I spent a lot of time on the road with them.”

The International Cricket Council and cricket’s special Anti-Corruption and Security Unit have already closed their investigations into McCullum, and are not expected to take action over McCullum’s failure to report Cairns’s actions.

Mr McCullum faced more than four of hours intense cross examination from Orlando Pownall QC, during which McCullum said he had been “scared to come forward and tell people that a guy I looked up to and idolised had asked me to match fix.”

Mr Pownall told him: “Failing to disclose to the ACSU without undue delay to engage in conduct that would be in breach of the anti-corruption code, that’s an offence, under Article 242. And you were well aware of that. For a breach of 242, a minimum of one year’s suspension, and a maximum of five years. You understand that now and you understood that then.”

McCullum scored 158 in the IPL’s opening match, a performance which he said caused him to develop a relationship with Modi, the league’s chief. Mr Pownall read an excerpt from McCullum’s 2010 book, Inside Twenty20, in which he said: “To me he [Modi] was my hero - the man that fast tracked my dream into reality.”

And yet, when Cairns decided to sue Modi for libel, McCullum did nothing. “You could have gone to Mr Modi and said, ‘Look chum, he’s a match fixer,” Pownall asked.

McCullum said he didn’t see it as “my responsibility” to do anything about it.

“It’s difficult to explain,” he said. “A lot of people felt like that about Chris, that he was looking out for me. But it doesn’t change the fact he asked me to spot fix for him on two occasions.”

The court also heard via video link from Shane Bond, a former New Zealand Test bowler, and now the bowling coach for the Mumbai Indians. The two men had had an argument over the telephone, after a headline on the cricinfo website said Bond had ‘slammed’ Cairns’s decision to return to the IPL in 2010 after a two year absence. “He called me from Dubai,” Bond said. “He asked me, ‘Why was I having a go at him in the public domain?’

“I was saying. ‘I didn’t have a go at you. I said I was surprised.’ He hadn’t played in two years. I didn’t like the headline, and I said, ‘That’s rich coming from a guy who was match-fixing.’

“Cairns said, ‘Do you want to hear my side of the story?’ And I said, ‘No I’m not interested. It’s rubbish.”

Former cricketer Chris Cairns arrives at Southwark Court (PA)

Over the coming weeks the trial is expected to hear from former Australian cricket captain Ponting, who would also have been obliged to report any knowledge of corrupt practices to the ACSU. McCullum said he “would have deliberately not told Mr Ponting about it.”

The court has already heard from Lou Vincent, the former New Zealand Test batsman and confessed match fixer who is serving a lifetime ban, who said Cairns had “chewed me up and spat me out”, after being recruited into his cabal of fixers.

The case is scheduled to last another four weeks.