England cricket captain Andrew Strauss threatened legal action against Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Ijaz Butt to clear his team's name from allegations of match-fixing.
"We are going to explore every avenue available to us to make sure our names aren't sullied in this manner. It was the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board coming out with these allegations and we as a group of players felt strongly that we should respond, given that they were directed to us," Strauss was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph.
Strauss, however was heartened that - after a bust-up between England's Jonathan Trott and Pakistan's Wahab Riaz at the nets - the fourth match was played in good spirit.
"I think both sides understood their responsibilities to put on a good, clean game of cricket. Any potential area where things might have developed, we were all very keen to calm things down very quickly. I've got to give a lot of credit to the players from both sides for doing that," he said.
"It's just a fact of life, with a lot of emotion flying around, things can get out of hand and I'm very proud of the fact that didn't happen. I think we were all clear it was very important for cricket that this game went ahead in the right spirit," he said.
"Both sides would say it was a difficult thing to do, but I think that's what transpired. We were very absolutely outraged by the allegations. We refute them completely and we were very disturbed that someone would come out with those allegations without any proof to back them up," he said.
{{/usCountry}}"Both sides would say it was a difficult thing to do, but I think that's what transpired. We were very absolutely outraged by the allegations. We refute them completely and we were very disturbed that someone would come out with those allegations without any proof to back them up," he said.
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