The batsman's counsel told a Hyderabad local court that the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) had acted against him with "deep-rooted malice".

Azharuddin was stranded on 99 Test caps when he was banned

He argued the ban had been handed out to appease the public sentiment and without evaluating Azharuddin's performance in the matches he was alleged to have fixed.

Azharuddin, 40, was among four players banned by the Indian board at the height of the match-fixing scandal that swept international cricket three years ago.

He and batsman Ajay Sharma were banned for life, while Ajay Jadeja and Manoj Prabhakar were suspended for five years.

Although Jadeja recently had his ban overturned, and returned to club cricket, Azharuddin's last attempt to arbitrate with the BCCI was turned down by a court in January.

A government-commissioned Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) found that the four player were paid by bookmakers in order to fix matches.

And the BCCI then appointed its own inquiry commissioner, K. Madhavan, who endorsed the CBI's finding.

However, the CBI's naming of six non-Indian players, including England's Alec Stewart and Martin Crowe of New Zealand, has been widely discredited.

The findings were based largely on the testimony of bookmaker MK Gupta, who subsequently refused to be cross-examined.

Azharuddin, India's most successful Test captain, was stranded on 99 Test appearances when he was banned.

He scored 6,215 Test runs and remains one-day cricket's second-highest scorer after successor Sachin Tendulkar with 9,378 runs from 334 matches.