Chris Cairns' lawyer has suggested Brendon McCullum dobbed Cairns into authorities to support Lalit Modi and save his own skin.
In summing up Cairns' perjury case, Orlando Pownall QC told the jury that when Mr McCullum learnt in 2010 that Cairns was taking libel action against Mr Modi, he didn't want Mr Modi to lose because he was paying his salary through the Indian Premier League (IPL).
"Imagine what was going through Brendon McCullum's mind… what was swirling round his head?" Mr Pownall asked.
He says Mr McCullum would have been thinking, "Goodness me, Mr Modi pays an enormous amount of money for me to play cricket in India… I don't want him to lose and imperil my career."
It is accepted by both sides that Cairns and McCullum had met and spoken about spread-betting in 2008.
Mr Pownall suggested Mr McCullum was worried details of meeting would come out and "bite him" so he went to authorities to give them an account and seek an assurance that he wouldn't be sanctioned himself.
The defence also questioned why on earth Cairns would choose to recruit a player as unlikely to cheat as Mr McCullum.
The Queens Council says Mr McCullum was a young player, being paid huge amounts of money playing in the IPL, at the peak of his game who had not yet reached the zenith of his career.
"He was not a flakey individual who might consider risking all for the sake of a few extra dollars", Mr Pownall added.
The jury was also asked to consider why Cairns, a captain in the unsanctioned Indian Cricket League, wish to recruit a single person in the IPL, "a tournament he was not playing in and in which he had no other players".
Mr Pownall made the point that the Crown has been at pains to emphasise that more than one player is needed to fix a cricket match.
He says a person seeking to recruit someone to match-fix would not approach a player unless there was remotest possibility that person might agree because the risks are too great if they don't agree.
Cairns' defence team is expected to finish its closing speech by the end of the day.
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