Watch: Cairns: Allegations 'bizarre and scary'
As it turned out, it was a serendipitous merging of motives. Right about the time officers of the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU) were building a watertight dossier on Vincent, the man himself was wrestling with a conscience that was crumbling, moods that were increasingly black and an outlook that was bleak.
The ACSU wanted Vincent to purge; Vincent needed to purge. The result was what has now been described as a "treasure trove" of information. Vincent allegedly gave the investigators times and places, he allegedly gave them methods, he allegedly gave them games and, most importantly, he allegedly gave them names.
One of those names just happened to be New Zealand cricket royalty.
RUMOURS HAD been swirling about Chris Cairns and his involvement in fixing since 2008, but they were largely confined to cricket's inner circle. It was not until he launched libel proceedings against Lalit Modi in the High Court at London in 2010 that they became public.
Modi, a former boss of the Indian Premier League (IPL), had tweeted that Cairns' removal from the rival, unsanctioned Indian Cricket League (ICL) was for match-fixing rather than not declaring an injury - the official reason. The tweet was briefly followed up by that giant receptacle of cricket news, cricinfo.com.
Cairns sued and subsequently won £90,000 in damages. Modi was ordered to pay extensive costs.
Chris Cairns in action for New Zealand in 2005. Photo / Getty Images
The ICL was considered a bookmakers' dream and nothing that has emerged since has countered the theory it was besieged by corruption.
Cairns, Vincent and another former New Zealand international, Daryl Tuffey, played for the Chandigarh Lions in the league, which ran from 2007 until it was wound down in 2009.
Vincent has testified that on his first night there, a man came up to his room offering him bat sponsorship worth £15,000 and a woman as a gift - the classic honey trap.
Vincent became suspicious and told the man to put the money in the room safe and leave with the woman.
It was from here that Vincent allegedly reported the approach, first to player manager Leanne McGoldrick, who was effectively the middle-person between the New Zealand players, of whom there were many, and ICL organisers.
Vincent then went to a teammate's room - later identified as Cairns - and alleges his "hero" and former Black Caps teammate listened to his plight and then said something along the lines of, "You work for me now".
Cairns' version of events bears no resemblance to this. He claims he reached out to Vincent as a friend, knowing the batsman was suffering from mental health issues, and that Vincent has betrayed that friendship with baseless claims.
If the fixing had started and stopped in the ICL, it is unlikely Vincent would have ever been caught. It was an unsanctioned tournament launched by media mogul Subhash Chandra, who was upset at having been shut out of the bidding rights for Indian cricket controlled by the Board of Control for India in Cricket (BCCI).
With the BCCI working overtime to make life as difficult as possible for the ICL and those who signed up for it, the tournaments were low-rent affairs, populated by second- and third-tier local players and mostly retired ex-internationals, held on grounds that were not under the control of Indian Cricket and its provincial subsidiaries.
Compared to the Bollywood glitz of the BCCI-sanctioned IPL, it barely registered on the cricketing conscious.
It was, however, televised, and that meant it attracted gamblers. With a laissez-faire approach to anti-corruption, it was ripe for plucking by underworld-controlled bookies.
Nobody really cared. Sure, the organisers would rather it wasn't happening, but they increasingly had bigger-picture issues to worry about - like how to pay their players.
They had an anti-corruption officer, former Victorian homicide detective Howard Beer, but it is doubtful he had anywhere near the resources needed.
Former NZ bowler Iain O'Brien has told of how the New Zealand team, while touring Bangladesh in late 2008, were watching ICL matches with open-mouthed disbelief at the brazenness of the cheating, but really it was a case of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".
So Cairns' departure would have just been one more murky aspect of an unloved, off-Broadway tournament if two things hadn't happened: Modi's tweet and Vincent bringing his cheating to England, home of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and a cricketing ruling class who had been happy to pass off fixing, with a couple of notable exceptions, as a subcontinental disease.
It is worth examining how both came about.
WHEN CAIRNS left the ICL for not disclosing his injury, his career was winding to a close. The ICL probably represented his last opportunity for a sizeable pay-cheque until the BCCI offered an amnesty for those who had played in the rebel league.
This gave Cairns an opportunity to put his name forward for the IPL auction. The IPL would have suited Cairns in his pomp down to the ground. It was all about big hits and chutzpah. Few New Zealand cricketers had been blessed with those tools like Cairns.
But even a Cairns that was long past his peak, and whose bowling had reduced in effectiveness to the point where he was an innocuous medium-pacer, was probably worth a punt for owners with an eye for a bargain.
But someone with intimate knowledge of the ICL saw his name on the auction manifest and recoiled. He had been told of a meeting between the coaches and captains of the ICL franchises, where the "real" reason for Cairns' expulsion had been aired.
Modi, armed with this "news", tweeted it. Cricinfo.com followed it up. The seed was sown.
Cairns was faced with a choice: Ignore it and he knew that the rumour mill was going to make it difficult for him to ever get a decent-paying job in cricket again, or take Modi on in court, but at the same time risk everything if he lost. Cairns took the latter option and won.
If the Met Police's perjury charges stick, the libel victory will stand as the ultimate Pyrrhic victory.
MEANWHILE, VINCENT was in deep. The bookies had him by the balls and, in his own mind at least, Cairns had him by the balls too. In a showpiece match at the ICL, Vincent had accidentally strayed from script, hitting a delivery for six that he was meant to walk past and get stumped.
According to testimony, Cairns was furious, confronting him at their hotel and swinging his bat near his head, claiming he had cost him millions.
Vincent claims he felt he owed Cairns, and says that therefore when his hero met him in 2008 in a motorway service stop near Nottingham and offered him the chance for "redemption", Vincent greedily accepted.
Vincent, then playing for Lancashire, had to underperform in a chosen match and he was to get opener Mal Loye, who played briefly for Auckland, to underperform too. Loye refused, but Vincent went ahead, getting out for 1 off 5 balls in a loss to Durham.
It was 2008, around about the time another serious player was about to enter the picture, although he wouldn't become part of the narrative for three more years, a delay that has never been properly explained away.
BRENDON McCULLUM is the captain of New Zealand now, a man with plenty of public goodwill in the bank after his home heroics during the 2013-14 season, which included New Zealand's first test triple century. But back then he was the personification of the frustration that surrounded New Zealand cricket. He was immensely talented and seemingly cocksure, but only rarely hit the heights people expected. He was also Cairns' mate.
When Cairns called him to meet in a hotel in India for a catch-up, he wouldn't have hesitated. After a bit of small talk, Cairns, McCullum alleges, started talking gambling on cricket, and whether McCullum would be prepared to help manipulate spreads.
McCullum declined.
Shortly after, while on tour with New Zealand in England, he got a call to meet Cairns in a cafe in Worcester.
It is alleged Cairns went through the mechanics of spread betting again and encouraged McCullum to help manipulate the spreads. McCullum declined and went back to his team, where he confided in senior players Daniel Vettori and Kyle Mills.
Whatever the outcome of those chats, McCullum chose not to dob in his mate - not until 2011 at least, when he reported the approach.
Cairns has latched on to this, the subtext being that in the intervening three years, a reason had emerged for McCullum to want to see his former mate go down.
"Mr McCullum first made his allegations to the ICC's ACSU on 17 February 2011,"Cairns says. "Not only was this nearly three years after the alleged approach, but importantly it is 13 months before the trial, in March, 2012, of my case in the London High Court against Lalit Modi about match-fixing.
"At that trial, every allegation that I was match-fixing was shown to be false. It is extraordinary that Mr McCullum told the ACSU in February 2011 that three years previously I approached him to match fix, yet neither he [nor] the ACSU anti-corruption officer that took his statement, Mr John Rhodes, took that information to the ICC or informed Mr Modi or anyone else of this startling revelation."
For all his information, Vincent was going to be a hard sell to a judge or jury.
By this time he was playing for Sussex and cheating again, at the behest of VG, who contacted him through Facebook and advanced Vincent £5000. Vincent pulled out of his next fix, to VG's disappointment, who responded by introducing him to a Pakistani bookmaker known as NG.
A gift of perfume was offered and accepted and with this simple transaction, Vincent agreed to help fix a 40-over game the following day against Kent. Vincent was to underperform and Sussex was to lose.
Everything, this time, went to plan. Perhaps too well.
On betting forums this match was looked upon with incredulity. Punters were openly discussing the skewed odds and Vincent's impending role in the fix. Chasing 217, Sussex were cruising at 76-0 but the market still favoured Kent.
"Be wary of Vincent in the chase," said one punter on the forum.
"Lou's play shall be the indicator towards the outcome of the match," said another with the moniker of wise-punt.
Sussex soon lost four wickets for seven runs in four overs, including Vincent, run out in bizarre circumstances, for 1 off 6 balls.
A poster named Captain Wurzel said: "Lou's retirement fund gets another boost."
In short, if punters were on to Vincent, the ACSU cannot have been far behind.
So when Lou Vincent started playing up while with the Auckland Aces in South Africa at the 2012 Champions League, the ACSU were waiting and ready to question him. His world was about to collapse.
IN JULY, Vincent received 11 life bans after admitting 18 charges of match-fixing.
He will never again play a significant role in the sport that made him, albeit briefly, famous.
Match-fixing has destroyed him.
Cairns will have his day in court now and a chance to clear his name.
If the charges stick, his name will become synonymous with one thing - and it won't be good.
