The former New Zealand cricketer Chris Cairns has been given the go ahead by a court to sue former chairman of the Indian Premier League Lalit Modi for posting a message on Twitter about dropping him from the IPL auction earlier this year.
Modi had said on his Twitter page that Cairns was being withdrawn from the auction due to a match-fixing taint.
Cairns denied the charges.
The Twitter message was removed after 16 hours but Cairns, who retired from Test cricket in 2004, claimed that the damage had been already done.
An Indian High Court judge has rejected a call from Modi for the case to be halted.
The Court heard evidence from an expert on Modi's behalf who estimated there were only 35 readers of the tweet while evidence for Cairns put it at about 100.
