"He's guilty, Cairnsy's guilty," Chris Cairns' legal adviser told former Black Caps all-rounder Chris Harris at a boozy charity cricket game in England in 2010, Southwark Crown Court has been told.

Harris, who gave evidence to the Cairns perjury trial by video link, said he was chatting to a group at a Bromley Cricket Club event, his wife Linda among them, when lawyer Andrew Fitch-Holland joined them.



Harris said the conversation switched to the topic of Cairns and his libel legal proceedings against Indian businessman Lalit Modi, which began in January 2010.

STACY SQUIRES In evidence via video link, former Black Cap Chris Harris told the court Chris Cairns' former lawyer told a group at a cocktail function "Cairnsy's guilty".

When someone asked about "poor Cairnsy" or said "what about Cairnsy?", Fitch-Holland said "he's guilty", Harris told the London jury.

"To my surprise, Mr Fitch-Holland said 'oh, he's guilty'," Harris told the jury.

Cairns, 45, is charged with perjury, and both he and and Fitch-Holland are on trial for perverting the course of justice.

GETTY IMAGES Chris Cairns' legal adviser Andrew Fitch-Holland is also accused of perverting the course of justice.

It is alleged Cairns lied under oath in court in 2012 when he said he'd "never" cheated at cricket, while Fitch-Holland is alleged to have sought a false statement to support the case against Modi.

Both deny all charges.

For Fitch-Holland, Jonathan Laidlaw, QC, laid out the circumstances of the conversation, saying his client had been drinking, was prone to making loud and humorous statements, and had been talking about Cairns' personal circumstances, not the Modi case.

The charity event was a place where people "could drink a great deal", he said.

"My client was one of those who enjoyed the alcohol, he certainly could enjoy a great deal of alcohol," Laidlaw said.

"In drink and with an audience, he is capable of - I use the phrase - holding forth."

Fitch-Holland could express views on a number of topics, in a loud, forceful and "humorous fashion", Laidlaw said.

Laidlaw suggested the words "he's guilty", applied to the the break-up of Cairns' marriage, not the Modi case.

Fitch-Holland was talking about Cairns' "management of his personal life", Laidlaw suggested, as he had been close to Cairns' former wife, and their two children.

Harris agreed that could be the case.

But asked if he thought the conversation was about the legal proceedings, Harris said "I believe so", replying to Crown prosecutor Sasha Wass, QC, that no one had been discussing the marriage breakdown.

"At the time, I passed it off as a pretty flippant remark," Harris said. He thought it was strange Fitch-Holland spoke so openly and was "in the know" about the match fixing case.

Cairns was with his now-wife Mel in 2008, the court was told last week.

Harris, who was captain of the Hyderabad Heroes in the Indian Cricket League (ICL) in 2008, told the court about "strange incidents" in ICL games that year involving Cairns, who led the Chandigarh Lions.



In one match, it appeared to Harris that both Chandigarh and the Mumbai Champs were trying to lose, with a Mumbai opener consistently blocking the ball in a Twenty20 game, when the object is to score quickly.



Chandigarh also laboured to score runs until their wicketkeeper Sarabjit Singh turned the match around with 41 off 22 balls.



Harris told the court that from where he was watching on television, Cairns seemed unhappy with the upward swing in his team's fortunes.

"It was an unusual expression, it seemed he wasn't pleased they had won," he told the jury.

But when shown in court video footage of the end of that game, Harris agreed Cairns had celebrated the victory "with a fair amount of emotion".

Though he said the match had looked "a little bit suspect", he agreed that was not his view when he made a statement to be used in the Modi hearing.

In her opening statement, Wass told the court Harris was said to have found an ICL match on April 15, 2008 "peculiar".

That was the match in which banned match-fixer Lou Vincent said he had "stuffed up" a planned fix, by hitting a six and a four off consecutive balls, when he was trying to get out.

Cairns was said to be angry about that, as it cost him a great deal of money, and Vincent told the jury he was threatened by Cairns with a bat.

Harris told the court he had not seen the game, or a video of it - he had simply been told by players in the ICL World side Cairns had hit a simple catch, and was run out attempting a "silly" run.

"You don't know that, because you never saw the match," defence lawyer Orlando Pownall, QC, told Harris.

"Correct," Harris said.

The last game Cairns played in the ICL was at Chandigarh, against Hyderabad. Harris lost the toss and expected to be put in to bat, given that about 80 per cent of matches there were won by the team that bowled first.

"Chris won the toss, they elected to bat first, which was a surprise to me."

Under cross examination, Harris agreed there had been times when he had not agreed with a captain's decision to bat or bowl first, and there had been times when he was wrong.

Auckland cricketer Stephen Pearson backed up much of what Lou Vincent said in the first week of the trial, about how he got involved in fixing, and games he had fixed.

Vincent had poured his heart out in a 10-hour conversation in Hove, England, in 2011, when he was contracted to Sussex - where he fixed games in county matches.

"That night he told me all about match fixing. He had taken instructions from Chris Cairns when he goes out to bat, to get a certain score and then get out," Pearson told the court.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) detective sergeant Timothy Stanton told the court about investigating Chandigarh and New Zealand bowler Daryl Tuffey, in late 2013.

He did not confirm the defence line last week that Tuffey was offered a deal to deliver the "scalp" of Cairns to authorities, saying he had not influenced the ICC investigation and had no power to do so.

Tuffey is not listed as a witness in the Cairns trial, and has not been charged with any offence.

The defence gets to put its case later this week. Cairns is not obliged to give evidence, though it seems likely he will.

Cairns took his libel case against Modi over a tweet that said Cairns had been involved in match fixing, the court has been told.

In a 2012 hearing, from which Cairns emerged from victorious, he said he had "never" cheated at cricket.

Perjury is a criminal offence, with a maximum sentence of seven years' jail.

Lou Vincent and Brendon McCullum both allege Cairns introduced them to match fixing in 2008, the year Harris is giving evidence about.



All the other witnesses, apart from Vincent's ex-wife Elly Riley, say they never discussed fixing with Cairns one-on-one.

Vincent told the London court that Cairns was the person who initially got him into fixing, in the unsanctioned ICL in 2008.

He was told to score 10 to 15 runs in 20 balls, then get out.

In a Twenty20 game, a batsman can change the course of a match by under performing - not going for his shots, picking out the field, getting run out needlessly.

Those in the know can make big money betting on brackets of overs, and the result.

McCullum told the jury Cairns talked to him about spot fixing in Kolkata early in 2008, then in England several months later. He rejected both alleged advances.

He was told he could earn US$70,000 to US$200,000 a match, McCullum said in his evidence.

Cairns also explained how to get the money back to New Zealand without questions being asked, McCullum told the court. The idea was to buy an apartment in Dubai, keep it for two years, then sell it.

New Zealand former internationals Shane Bond, Andre Adams, Kyle Mills and Daniel Vettori, and former Australian captain Ricky Ponting have also beamed into the trial by video.