Nike Air Max Pas Cher - Former New Zealand cricket captain Chris Cairns told the High Court in London on Monday that an accusation of match-fixing had reduced his career to "dust" and strained his marriage. Cairns, 41, is suing Lalit Modi, the former chairman of the Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 franchise, for substantial libel damages over an "unequivocal allegation" made on Twitter.
Cairns' lawyer, Andrew Caldecott, informed Judge David Bean, who is hearing the case without a jury, that Modi's tweet from January 2010 was picked up by the cricket website Cricinfo. Upon complaint from Cairns, Cricinfo withdrew the report, paid damages, and apologized. However, Modi refused to apologize and instead pleaded justification, maintaining that the charge was true. Cairns asserts that the allegation was "wholly untrue" and constitutes a very grave libel. He stated that if it were left uncorrected, it would destroy all he had achieved over a 20-year career, during which he accomplished the rare double of 200 wickets and 3,000 runs in 62 Tests.
In his testimony, Cairns said: "The defendant's allegations have also had a profound effect on my personal and private life. It put a strain on my marriage. It hurts that my wife may think that I am not the man she thought I was. It hurts me too that friends, many of whom are former cricketing foes, will question my integrity as a man and a sportsman and that all I achieved in the great game of cricket is dust."
Caldecott noted that Cairns, who lived in England as a child when his father Lance played there and had himself played seven seasons for Nottinghamshire, was extremely concerned about his reputation in Britain. At the time of the tweet, Modi was one of the most powerful men in cricket, and any statement of his was likely to be taken seriously, the court was told.
Lawyers explained that in 2007 and 2008, Cairns captained the Chandigarh Lions in three competitions within the Indian Cricket League (ICL), which briefly flourished before the rise of the IPL. The allegation made by Modi pertained to the second and third of these competitions, held between March and April 2008 and October and November of the same year.