Fleming reveals offer by Indian sports promoter

Stephen Fleming has claimed that he was offered £200,000 (approx US$370,000) in 1999 to join a match-fixing syndicate. According to an AAP report, Fleming has provided details of the incident in his new book Balance of Power, co-written by the New Zealand journalist Richard Boock.

Fleming claims that the incident occurred during the 1999 World Cup, when a man - who he later identifies as Aushim Khetrapal, an Indian sports promoter - approached him in a bar in a Leicester hotel, where the New Zealand team was staying. "He said, 'If you want to know where the real money is, it's in the syndicate that's going on around the world right now, speculating on the likelihood of certain results or occurrences'," Fleming wrote. "He said there were top athletes involved, and did I notice that Manchester United had been upset the other day, and that Andre Agassi had been eliminated from a major. He said 'Look, those things are not coincidences.' I said, 'Really?'"

Talking about the offer made to him, Fleming writes: "He'd pay me £200,000 straight up, then another £100,000 in a year's time. I remember looking at the numbers he'd written down and saying, 'Look, I don't think we should be talking about this. I don't really want to be part of this at all'."

Fleming writes that he was shocked by the offer, and promptly informed John Graham, the New Zealand team manager at the time, and the following year gave a statement to Scotland Yard detectives.

Chris Lewis, the England allrounder, made similar allegations a few months later, when he claimed that Khetrapal had offered him £300,000 to lose a Test against New Zealand. Khetrapal denied those allegations at the time.