Star opening batsman Glenn Blakeney has moved to quell assertions that he conspired in an attempt to fix a recent cricket match.

Rumours have been rampant among the cricket-mad eastern parishes that Blakeney underperformed during the second round of the Eastern Counties Cup competition while playing for Bailey's Bay against his regular league team and reigning champions St. David's.

Blakeney, Bermuda's most prolific run scorer this season, with an average of more than 50, managed just 13 before spooning a catch to Del Hollis at square leg, while attempting his favourite hook shot off Dale Fox during the aforementioned match, fuelling talk of this being a deliberate out on the part of the batsman.

An angry Blakeney, clearly taken aback by such accusations, yesterday told of how what had initially come across as a something jokingly being bandied about had evolved into something much more serious, particularly among the 'Bay crowd', with the batsman being said to have been 'paid off'.

"At first it was a joke, with just a few people coming up to me and saying that I had fixed the match, but when everybody starts to approach you saying the same thing and they're actually thinking and believing it to be true then it becomes a serious thing," said Blakeney. "And, to me, match fixing is the ultimate betrayal for any team or any country.

"People are saying that, because I didn't make that many runs and the way how St. David's came out and set a field against me, having a midwicket, square leg and long on, it was all a set-up. And then when Dale bowled me a short ball, which I went after and got out it was supposedly all by design. But it couldn't be further from the truth, and this stuff is really upsetting me and getting next to me."

Obviously being questioned is Blakeney's integrity, and one need only look at the result of recent probes into the actions of former South African captain Hansie Cronje and Muhammad Azharuddin, the former Indian skipper. Both received life bans from the sport and had their names forever tarnished after being found guilty of accepting money from bookmakers in return for having their teams underperform during Test and international one day matches.

While popular sentiment in the cases of Cronje and Azharuddin swayed to the side of their guilt, there is a general feeling that the Blakeney case was more a matter of disgruntled fans instigating the vicious rumour based on Bay's inability to seize the Cup from the Islanders, with Blakeney an easy target based on his association with the champions.

"League is league and county is county," said Blakeney. " If I wanted to play for St. David's I would have made that choice before I ever played a match for Bay, because I was eligible for either.

"And there's nobody that wanted to win this game more than I did . . . this is crazy what people are saying."

Backing up Blakeney were umpire George Francis, who officiated during the match in question, and Delby Borden, St. David's chairman of cricket.

Francis exclaimed the accusations as a heartless attack on Blakeney's integrity, one with no merit whatsoever.

"Nonsense! Total nonsense, believe you me!" said Francis. "It never occurred, I never heard of it, and it's really pathetic. I really can't believe it, and there's no-one who could tell that this guy did this.

"This is not the first time he's played for them. He played for them last year, and this year, hey, he didn't get a hundred, but what's the big deal.

"But it's a serious thing, because he didn't get too many, and what people are probably looking at also is that he scored 245 the next day.

"I can say that I have quite a lot of respect for this youngster and know him very well, having watched him come up through the ranks, and that certainly is not him. Somebody's trying to damage his credibility, and that's not right at all."

Meanwhile, Borden reaffirmed the points made by Francis, noting Blakeney's commitment to winning and scoring runs no matter who the opponent.

He said that he had been aware of the rumours for some time and had noticed how Blakeney appeared at a loss to decipher exactly why such talk had befallen him.

"It's terrible, because the guy loves the game," said Borden, a former opening bat for St. David's. "We don't have any problem with him playing for Bay, because he started his Eastern Counties career there and can't play for us as a result, and it's a challenge for him," said Borden. "People are starting rumours that are nowhere close to being the truth.

"We certainly haven't paid him, and it's just so nasty I don't know where this could have come from.

"We would never attempt to do something like that. If that was the case, we would tell him not to play at all. I mean why get him to play?

"I can say that with Glenn coming into our programme at St. David's I'd heard a lot of rumours about him, but we don't have any trouble with Glenn, we love Glenn. When he comes training he puts everything into it, he gels with the youngsters, always has something nice to say to them, causes no disturbance in the changing room or anywhere else, and, in fact, has been one of the better players that we've picked up.

"I'm in charge of the cricket programme at St. David's as the cricket chairman and we don't allow anybody into our programme that's going to cause trouble or anything like that. And with Clay (Smith), Glenn, and Dean (Minors), all of them have served to help our programme, particularly with the youngsters, so for somebody to say that about Glenn is flat out wrong."

While no officials from the Eastern Counties or Bermuda Cricket Board of Control could be contacted for a response regarding the issue, an investigation is not expected.