Explosive claims of an attempt to corrupt the third Ashes Test in Perth were dismissed by cricket authorities on Thursday as having "no substance" as fears about the Big Bash League also being infiltrated by fixers were played down as well.

Only hours before the first day of the WACA farewell Test, the sport was rocked by allegations published by British newspaper The Sun that a former Indian state cricketer and a bookmaker had plotted to fix parts of the match for large sums of money and boasted of having players who worked for them as "puppets". The report had also claimed that no current England players were involved.

Cricket Australia staff were alerted to the pending publication of the story in the early hours of the morning and the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption chief, Alex Marshall, collected a dossier of evidence on a USB stick from the newspaper soon after the story went online at 10pm local time in London, which was 6am in Perth.

Australian players were alerted to the news by a message from a team staffer and by 7am CA chief executive James Sutherland was on an urgently convened phone hook-up with Marshall, England and Wales Cricket Board chief executive Tom Harrison and ICC chief David Richardson as they sought to tackle a potentially major crisis for the game.