The jury in the perjury trial of the former New Zealand cricket captain Chris Cairns has retired to consider its verdict after more than seven weeks of hearing evidence and allegations of match-fixing at Southwark crown court.

Cairns is charged with lying under oath after telling a court, during his £90,000 libel victory over the former Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi in 2012, that he had “never” cheated at cricket and would not contemplate doing so. Cairns and his co-accused Andrew Fitch-Holland, his friend and former “legal adviser”, are also charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice in seeking a false witness statement during that case from the self-confessed match-fixer Lou Vincent. Both men deny the charges.

Mr Justice Sweeney completed his summing-up of case, which began on 5 October, at 1.02pm on Tuesday and in his instructions to the jury insisted they were under no time pressure to reach a verdict. After spending the previous two days recounting the evidence of Vincent and his former wife Ellie Riley – both of whom claimed Cairns was involved in fixing when playing in the now defunct Indian Cricket League – the judge spent the morning going through the testimony given by the current New Zealand captain, Brendon McCullum.

McCullum had claimed in court that he was asked three times by Cairns, his former team-mate and childhood “idol”, to get involved in spot-fixing in 2008 and gave three statements to that effect to the International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption unit in 2011, 2012 and 2014. Sweeney advised the jury it was up to them to decide whether differences in these three statements over time, as queried by the defence, were a result of McCullum changing his version of events to serve his own interests or a product of him recounting further detail after additional questioning.

While the jury have heard evidence from former players including New Zealand’s Daniel Vettori and Ricky Ponting, they have been told by the judge that in order to convict Cairns of perjury, they must believe at least two of Vincent, Riley and McCullum, the crown’s three key witnesses.

The charge of perverting the course of justice, against Fitch-Holland and Cairns, hinges on a guilty verdict in the first count of perjury against the latter. The court is not in session on Wednesday and Thursday, with Friday the earliest when a verdict can be reached.