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Chris Cairns’ reputation ‘scorched’

Despite being cleared of perjury, Chris Cairns says his reputation has been “scorched”.

The jury in the former New Zealand cricketer’s London trial on Monday found him not guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice after deliberating for just over 10 hours.

Cairns held back tears as the verdict was read out, and mouthed “Thank you” to the jury.

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The 45-year-old comforted his co-defendant, Andrew Fitch-Holland, patting him on the back as the British barrister broke down sobbing when he was also acquitted of perverting the course of justice.

Speaking after the verdict, Cairns revealed that the jury’s decision was not clear to him straight away.

“At the start, I couldn’t quite hear the foreman, I didn’t actually know what he’d said, so when I saw Fitch’s face and the jubilation there, it came to roost what had occurred,” he told a crowd of media outside Southwark Crown Court.

“I’ve been through the mill and come out the other side a very happy man.”

However, he ruled out a return to the cricket world, saying it would be a hard environment to go back in to.

“Reputationally, I’m completely scorched, burnt completely, but it hasn’t stopped me and it won’t stop me, I’ll keep going forward,” Cairns said.

Black Caps captain Brendon McCullum was among the Crown’s key witnesses, and told the court Cairns approached him in 2008 to recruit him to fix games.

Asked what he would say to McCullum if he saw him now, Cairns said he would simply ask “Why?”

A number of Cairns’s former teammates and sporting rivals, including former Australian captain Ricky Ponting and former Black Caps Shane Bond, Chris Harris, Kyle Mills and Andre Adams, also gave evidence for the prosecution.

However, Cairns did not appear to believe those men had come to court to hang him out to dry.

“I don’t think people were there with malicious intent,” he said.

The charges stemmed from a 2012 libel case in which Cairns stated that he “never, ever cheated at cricket”, and for which he and Fitch-Holland were accused of trying to get former Black Cap Lou Vincent to provide a false statement.

The trial, which was initially set down for four weeks, but ended up lasting for more than nine, had been “hell”, Cairns said.

“Other than being exhausted, very, very tired, I’m sincerely looking forward to getting home and seeing my family and being with them.”

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