The perjury trial of the former New Zealand cricketer Chris Cairns will go into a ninth week as the jury continues its deliberations at Southwark crown court.
Cairns is charged with lying under oath after a 2012 libel victory over the former Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi in which he told the court he had “never” cheated at cricket and would not contemplate doing so.
Cairns, along with his friend and former “legal adviser” Andrew Fitch-Holland, also faces a second charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice in seeking a false witness statement from the self-confessed match-fixer Lou Vincent. Both men deny the charges.
The jury, which retired on Tuesday and did not sit on Wednesday or Thursday, came back on Friday morning to ask if it might return a majority verdict. After discussion with the respective legal teams, Mr Justice Sweeney said he would accept this.
