Michael Clarke, the Australia Test and one-day captain, has defended his players against match-fixing allegations after a sports agent said that the country's top cricketers were "the biggest" culprits.
Mazhar Majeed, accused by prosecutors of taking bribes to fix matches, also said that Australian cricketers had fixed "brackets", a set period of a match on which gamblers bet, a London court heard on Monday.
The accusation drew a scornful response from Cricket Australia earlier this week, and Clarke said on Friday he was "very confident" no Australian players were involved. "For me, personally, it's not the Australian way," Clarke said in Sydney before boarding a plane for the tour of South Africa.
"Never in my time have I experienced a conversation with anybody about any such thing.
"There's obviously been a couple of occasions when guys have been approached and that's been reported to our team manager and the ICC … so all the boys in the Australian team are aware that it is happening, it is going on.
"But it's never involved me and I'm very confident it's never involved any of the Australian players," he said.
Clarke's comments come as the trial involving spot-fixing allegations against Salman Butt, the former Pakistan captain, and Mohammad Asif, the fast bowler, continues in London.
Prosecutors allege that Majeed conspired with Butt, Asif and Mohammad Amir, his fellow paceman, to fix parts of the Lord's Test between England and Pakistan last August.
Clarke will lead the Australia team in three one-day internationals and two Test matches against South Africa in October and November.
