Alec Stewart has expressed his relief after being cleared of any involvement in match-fixing.

The England stalwart had been living under a cloud of suspicion since 1 November last year when Indian bookmaker Mukesh Gupta alleged that Stewart had received £5,000 for providing information to a bookmaker about match conditions and team selection.

Stewart had always vehemently denied the charges and yesterday was cleared of the allegations. Gupta had apparently refused to make a statement to Sir Paul Condon's Anti-Corruption Unit or to appear at any disciplinary hearing or substantiate his claim.

England's wicket-keeper/batsman said: "I am obviously pleased it has all been cleared up. It has gone on for eight months, and there has been a lot of publicity on front and back pages.

"Now I would like to think there will be the same publicity after Sir Paul Condon has made his comments which have cleared this matter up.

"I wouldn't not say I am relieved. The things which have been said have not been nice, but I am a pretty strong person," he said.

"In English law you cannot make those allegations public. But they were, so I had to live with that.

"Now Sir Paul has made his comments and cleared me I can get on with my cricket. The eight months have gone on. But thankfully it has been a very thorough job.

"The ECB have been very supportive, and so have the public."

Stewart said that it was public goodwill that helped him to keep going while bthe investigation was ongoing and that the vast majority of communications he received were designed to cheer him up.

"I have had a lot of positive letters and I have had just two indifferent ones. As always with those, no one signed them or put an address on them.

"I would like to thank everyone who has written and said those supportive things."

Stewart is the first high-profile player to be cleared of allegations made by Gupta. The Anti-Corruption Unit is still investigating allegations made about Brian Lara, Mark Waugh, Martin Crowe, Arjuna Ranatunga and Aravinda de Silva.

It is understood that the findings over the allegations concerning Waugh are expected soon.

According to AFP, the Australian Cricket Board said it had asked its anti-corruption investigator Greg Melick to wind up his report into Gupta's allegations against Waugh.

"Ten days ago, when Gupta decided not to co-operate with the inquiry, we wrote to Greg Melick and asked him to prepare the report for us," ACB chief executive James Sutherland said.

"We expect that report will be ready sooner rather than later."

© CricInfo Ltd.