COURT One at Southwark Crown Court has become an impromptu stop on the tourist trail for New Zealanders in England for the Rugby World Cup. This week, if Ricky Ponting appears as a witness in the perjury trial of the former New Zealand allrounder Chris Cairns, one or two Australians might join the visitors to the courtroom.
The former captain of Australia would be the biggest name yet to testify in a trial that last week brought Brendon McCullum, the New Zealand captain, into the witness box and brought renewed focus on match-fixing in cricket.
Cairns is accused of lying in court during a successful libel case he brought against Lalit Modi, the chairman of the Indian Premier League, who tweeted in 2010 that the allrounder had been removed from the auction list of IPL players because of his “past record of match-fixing”. Cairns repeatedly stated on oath that he had never cheated and was awarded £1.4m in damages and costs.
During the first week of the trial, Cairns, 45, who denies perjury and perverting the course of justice, sat impassively in the dock. The shock of dark hair, a feature of his combative approach on the field, has been clipped but he looks trim enough to bowl. In his prime, he was a flamboyant allrounder who could turn a game. One after another, former New Zealand teammates in the witness box, from Lou Vincent to Andre Adams and Kyle Mills, even McCullum himself, cited Cairns as a hero. “He was the biggest icon player for me growing up,” Vincent told the court.
McCullum, whose all-action New Zealand team enlivened the cricketing summer, attracted a full house to the court. His tone was firm and strong. He told the court of his shock when Cairns approached him in June 2008 in India with a “business proposition”, days before the start of the Indian Premier League. McCullum was out with Ricky Ponting at the time, but went to see Cairns in his hotel room. “He [Cairns] asked me what I knew about spot-fixing [manipulating periods in a match] in cricket,” McCullum alleged.
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“I was shocked and thought that he may have been joking, but I was quickly becoming aware that he was not. He said all the big boys were doing it.” Sums of up to £130,000 could be made, Cairns is alleged to have said.
Orlando Pownall, QC for the defence, said McCullum did not report the approach until nearly three years later during the World Cup in Bangladesh. In his evidence, Mills said that McCullum had mentioned the approach by Cairns in late 2008 or early 2009. “I was pretty gobsmacked,” Mills told the court. He said that, at the time, anti-corruption education was “rare” and it was only later, when they were both sitting in a talk by John Rhodes, of the International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption unit, that he urged McCullum to report the approach to the authorities.
Vincent told the court that he had first started cheating when he joined the Chandigarh Lions, captained by Cairns, in the rebel Indian Cricket League, a now defunct rival to the IPL. He was initially offered cash and a prostitute to fix matches by a man called Varun Gandhi but when he told Cairns of the approach, Cairns allegedly said: “Right, you’re working for me now.” Vincent said: “I was under direct orders from Chris Cairns to get involved in fixing.” He claimed that he deliberately underperformed in four games in 2008, but continued cheating while playing for Lancashire and Sussex. Vincent, who suffered from mental health problems, admitted that he was “intimidated” by Cairns.
In his evidence via video link, Andre Adams recalled a conversation between a number of New Zealand players in the summer of 2008 before the second ICL tournament. “We were talking about match-fixing because we thought it was going on,” Adams told the court. “Chris Cairns said: ‘What does it matter? This is a non-sanctioned event, how will they get anyone? How will they ever prove it?’ It was something along those lines. That was surprising to me.”
Elly Riley, Vincent’s former wife, is among the witnesses due to be called this week as the trial continues. Several international umpires could also be called as witnesses, while Ponting is due to make a brief appearance via videolink on Tuesday.
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