KARACHI: Pakistan opener Imran Farhat on Wednesday denied any involvement in an alleged match-fixing scam, after a new video footage implicated him in bookmaker’s ring.Television footage apparently showed bookmaker Mazhar Majeed implicating four Pakistani players during a crisis-hit tour of England.

“Majeed is neither my agent nor I am involved in any wrongdoing,” Farhat told AFP.

“I will talk to my lawyer to decide what to do because this footage and the claims are a character assassination attempt.”

Pakistan’s largest private television station Geo aired the footage late Tuesday, apparently taken from a British tabloid sting operation during Pakistan’s fourth Test against England at Lord’s in August.

The News of the World report showed Majeed posing as a marketing agent and claiming that seven Pakistani players would obey his orders during matches.

In August, the newspaper named former Test captain Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer as implicated in the sting. All three have since been provisionally suspended by the International Cricket Council (ICC).

But the latest footage showed Majeed speaking to an undercover reporter and revealing the names of four other players.

Majeed said: “I’ll tell you who we’ve got then. We’ve got Umar Akmal, Kamran Akmal, Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif, Salman Butt, Wahab Riaz... that’s six, yeah? Imran Farhat... that’s seven out of 11 players.”

In the footage, Majeed suggested he was thinking long-term.

“These boys are going to be around years and I’ve got the best boys and it’s long-term thinking.”

“Some players are not interested, like Younis Khan, Shahid Afridi, Abdul Razzaq and Saeed Ajmal – they are too religious,” he was shown saying.

The footage is likely to increase pressure on Pakistani cricket, which has been plunged into a series of crises.

In October, the ICC told the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to take strict measures to curb corruption and threatened sanctions if it failed to do so.

As a result, the PCB introduced a new code of conduct for players, with stricter punishments for any wrongdoing.

The PCB has not cleared Kamran, Shoaib Malik and leg-spinner Danish Kaneria – all reportedly under suspicion of corruption – for team selection.

Farhat was dropped over poor form, but Riaz and Umar Akmal were chosen in the Twenty20 and Test squads for this month’s tour of New Zealand.

The ICC rejected appeals by Salman and Aamer against their suspensions last month, while Asif withdrew his appeal. The three players will appear before an ICC commission in Qatar in January to face the fixing charges.

The PCB declined to comment on the latest footage.