'Banned' Mervyn Westfield says Kaneria 'lured' him into spot fixing

Former Essex pace bowler Mervyn Westfield, who was jailed for four months after being found guilty of spot-fixing, has said that Pakistan cricketer Danish Kaneria lured him into spot-fixing by telling him that players don't earn enough in cricket these days.

According to the Dawn, Westfield was jailed in 2012 and banned from professional cricket for five years and club cricket for three for accepting 9,606 dollars to concede more than 12 runs in an over in a 40-over match against Durham in September 2009.

He said that Kaneria, who is a bubbly person and very likeable in the dressing room, said to him in his own house that they wanted him to go for 12 runs or more in the first over he bowled, and that others in the game were doing it as well.

Westfield said that Kaneria was a role model for most people in the team.

The cricketer said that he tried to keep it all to himself and the day he came to bowl his first over against Durham, he did not check the scoreboard to see if he went for 12 runs or more.

Kaneria, who has repeatedly protested his innocence, has had two appeals against his ban and a third looking to reduce the ban rejected, the report said.

Last month he filed another appeal in a London court and vowed to carry on his fight, the report added.