Chris Cairns perjury trial: Team-mate threatened 'to f***ing kill' the former New Zealand cricketer, court hears

Daryl Tuffey made threat over huge match-fixing payments that were never made, claims self-confessed match-fixer, Lou Vincent

Daryl Tuffey (left) and Chris Cairns playing for New Zealand in 2003 (Getty Images)

Former New Zealand Test cricketer Daryl Tuffey threatened “to f***ing kill” his team-mate Chris Cairns over huge match-fixing payments that were never made, according to a third team-mate and confessed match-fixer, Lou Vincent.

Cairns, a former Black Caps captain, is on trial for perjury and perverting the course of justice, after he successfully sued an Indian cricket administrator who accused him on Twitter of fixing matches.

Lou Vincent, a 36-year-old former batsman who has been banned from cricket for life, has claimed that it was Cairns who recruited him into the world of match-fixing, when they played together for the Chandigarh Lions in the Indian Premier League.

Vincent claimed Tuffey had told him at a chance meeting that he had “not received one cent” from Cairns, despite promises of payments amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Vincent said Tuffey had told him: “I’ll f***ing kill him.”

In a 2012 trial, 45-year-old Cairns successful sued the Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi for libel, and claimed under oath during that trial that he had “never, ever cheated at cricket”.

Last September the Metropolitan Police announced it would be prosecuting Cairns for perjury over the trial.

Vincent alleges that Cairns was at the centre of a match-fixing ring, and would, with the assistance of willing team-mates, deliberately lose matches while captain of the Chandigarh Lions.

Vincent told Southwark Crown Court: “He [Cairns] used and abused me. Chewed me up and spat me out.”

Later this week the trial is expected to hear from Brendon McCullum, another former New Zealand captain who has claimed to have been approached by Cairns about assisting him in fixing matches.

Under cross-examination, Vincent was shown videos from a Chandigarh Lions match which he has claimed to have been paid to throw, but instead scored a four and six from consecutive balls. Vincent claimed his footwork had been “horrendous” and that what Cairns’ barrister, Orlando Pownall, called “a square cut from the middle of the bat” had in fact been what “any professional cricketer would say is a thick outside edge”.

Pownall also challenged an earlier claim of Vincent’s that he, a batsman, had been ordered to bowl by Cairns, in order to throw the match. Pownall pointed out that while bowling he had in fact taken the wicket of Jacques Kallis, one of the game’s all-time greats. “He went for a swing and he nicked it,” Vincent claimed. “Silly man.”

Cairns played 62 Tests for New Zealand, taking over 200 wickets and scoring more than 3,000 runs in a 16-year Test career stretching from 1989 to 2004, and was one of the team’s key players.

Vincent played 23 Tests for New Zealand between 2001 and 2007. In December 2013, it became public knowledge that he was being investigated by the International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption unit and in July 2014, having admitted to being involved in widespread match-fixing, he received a lifetime ban from all forms of the game.