We will be relieved once the series is over: Strauss

England cricket captain Andrew Strauss says he would be relieved once the ongoing series against Pakistan is over and done with as the allegations of spot-fixing were casting a shadow on his teams performance.

England cricket captain Andrew Strauss says he would be relieved once the ongoing series against Pakistan is over and done with as the allegations of spot-fixing were casting a shadow on his teams performance.

(We) will be quite relieved when this series is over and done with,no doubt about it, Strauss was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

The England captains comments came after the ICC launched an investigation into the third England-Pakistan ODI at the Oval which the visitors won by 23 runs to pull one back in the series. We need to get into a situation where we are 100 per cent sure every team that is playing international cricket is clean. How we go about that? Well thats the sixty million dollar question, Strauss added.

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Strauss said he hopes no more allegations surface. The last thing Id want to happen is for it to be swept under the carpet and for people to think,OK weve got through this,let the game continue, because we will have to deal with it again at some stage and each time these things come out it just chips away at the greater game of cricket, he said.

The last thing the game needs right now is to be dragged through the mill even further. It would astonish me if something like this was going on given the circumstances in which this one-day series is being played but if it is,then thats a pretty strong indictment of how prevalent this type of thing is in the game, he added.