Chris Cairns bears no grudges against Brendon McCullum and Lou Vincent.

Chris Cairns said he bears no grudges against former international teammates Brendon McCullum and Lou Vincent, who were among those to testify against him.

New Zealand cricket great Chris Cairns eels he can talk candidly about the pain of match-fixing allegations brought against him now that he has survived multiple health scares. The former allrounder spoke publicly for the first time Monday about the court battles to clear his name spanning 2012 to 2015.

The 51-year-old’s attitude has changed since suffering a heart attack last August that placed him on life support.

He subsequently became paralysed from the waist down after suffering a stroke during one of four open-heart surgeries.

In February, he revealed he had been diagnosed with bowel cancer.

Canberra-based Cairns told the podcast the health battles carried a silver lining – helping cleanse his mind of the dark feelings that had hounded him since 2015.

“Maybe during that time, it (the match-fixing trials) built up the steel in me that allowed me to survive what I went through – because it was about survival at that time. I was on my own, cast as the villain, that was my role.

In March 2012, Cairns successfully sued former Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi for libel, after Modi alleged on Twitter that the New Zealander had been involved in match-fixing in 2008.

Cairns won costs and damages.

It put him under the international blow torch for eight weeks at London’s High Court, late in 2015.

Despite losing all cricket-related work in the wake of a trial he described as “horrendous”, Cairns says he doesn’t regret taking action against Modi.

“He was the most influential name in the game of cricket and the unintended consequence of that set things in motion.