Book review: Cronjegate issues re-eaxmined in startling updated version of Indian journalist's book

Book: Not Quite Cricket by Pradeep Magazine
Published by Penguin Books (India)
Now available in England

It does not need someone with a sharp entrepreneurial mind to decide to make a quick dollar or two (in this case it is rand) out of a cause celebre such as Cronjegate with it appurtenant match-fixing innuendo.

Yet, it is not at all surprising that in an age where commercial mimicry is used as a form of social statement they are now producing in Johannesburg mock South African World Cup shirts with a difference: the $ sign has replaced the S in Hansie and the $ sign has replaced the figure five which adorned the shirt Cronje wore.

While the HAN$IE statement adds its own ribald observation it is perhaps apocryphal of an age where there is serious turmoil at international level. We now have serious challenges to authority hanging as heavily in the boardroom as well as the dressingroom which has created a suspicious mind and a culture of corruption.

As the widespread dishonesty, imagined or real, sees Pakistan ban for life a former captain, Salim Malik and seam bowler, Ata-ur-Rehman and heavily fined among others Wasim Akram, the Australian Cricket Board have appointed an investigator into probe claims of player malpractice and South Africa prepares next week for the opening "chapters and pages of revelations" in the Cronjegate saga.

Someone who has been at the centre of the investigations for more than three years is Indian journalist Pradeep Magazine, of the Indian Express; a warm, sensitive writer of mostly cheerful disposition, he has now reissued an updated and revised edition of the book published during last year's World Cup.

It is an inscrutable story which began with a chance encounter with a bookmaker during India's tour of the Caribbean in 1996/97 and was revived barely two months ago at a time South Africa were preparing for the three-match series against Australia. The New Delhi police stunned the sports world by announcing they had laid charges of match-fixing against Cronje and three other teammates, including Herschelle Gibbs.

It is a story of intrigue, innuendo and with widespread ramifications for the game at international level and during a time when the fresh breezes known as globalisation and new nationalism are blowing through the corridors of the sport from South America and the Caribbean, the Pacific, Africa, Asia as well as Europe.

It is an ugly story dealing in half-truths, complicity and corruption and which has needed skill and some courage to investigate, and is as damning as it is revealing. When it was first published the Pakistan Cricket Board had been dismissed by the government and Sri Lanka board was in turmoil over charges of `rigged voting'.

Although, contrary to popular opinion, the game would still manage to do quite well these days without the intervention of politics, shady deals and bookies trying to make a bigger buck out of the game than they should be allowed, those acting as custodians of the sport need to answer charges levelled at their competency.

While the revised version takes in much of the new material in a preface and an epilogue and a couple of chapters have been amended there is no mistaking Pradeep's examination which deals mainly with the corruption within the Indian area of jurisdiction. His comments are penetrating and the need to destroy the malaise all but levels the administrative playing fields. Whether this is too late he allows the reader to make up his own mind.

What we have here is a deep and quite frightening as the BCCI try to hide facts and deny there is a serious disease spreading at their inadequate handling of the remedy. There are times when the charges arraigned are serious enough to warrant a second probe into the affairs of the board. It has been some time since the International Cricket Council asked the BCCI to release the report by a former Mumbai judge, Y V Chandrachud, an erstwhile chief justice of India, on his investigation into allegations of Indian bookmaker's into match-fixing allegations. Naturally the Indian board is unlikely to release a report condemning their own failure and corruption in their ranks. So far the BCCI have managed to hold down the image of being a chauvinistic, secret society. What is scary is how the mounting evidence is being ignored and swept under the proverbial grubby mat.

On another front, writhing as they are in their own stewed juices of self doubt the ICC, while attempting to present a united front and with it much-needed credibility, are also a little frightened to shake their own cupboard too hard. It might result in a few of their own skeletons being rattled in a synergetic Danse Macabre.

This, unfortunately is the general perception in which the ICC are held by what an Indian journalist, M.S. Prabhakara, sneeringly referred to as the "cricket loving public" or CLP. As with too many others, he viewed the initial attack on the New Delhi police's exposure as being either anti-Indian or even "racist".

Which is a fair assumption considering South Africa's past: their apartheid laws and a long-suffering, marginalised, under-privileged and disenfranchised majority; now it has been turned around as the sins of the fathers and mothers are vented on their off-spring. Not that this is now part of what has become an often inflamed debate of match-fixing and the involvement by players and in some cases, even administrators, in what is the first major scandal in the sport in the 21st century.

As South Africa prepare for a government-sponsored inquiry headed by retired Cape Town judge, Mr Justice Edwin King, into the charges of dishonesty at the highest levels and which brought disgrace to Cronje, the former South African captain, perhaps the culture of corruption has already uncovered a nest if vipers.

It was at a pre-World Cup final breakfast in St John's Wood on June 20, 1999 when Rob Steen and Mike Marqusee handed over a copy of Pradeep original expose and gave it a high recommendation. Both advised it was not to be treated lightly; by the end of the first chapter it was easy to see why. Pradeep had pulled together through skill and with not a little courage, an investigation which was as damning as it was revealing.

What has changed since last June when Pradeep's book was first published was the damning announcement on April 7 this year by New Delhi police of tapes said to implicate Cronje, Herschelle Gibbs, Nicky Boje and Pieter Strydom in match-fixing. The police, said K K Paul, additional commissioner of police, had laid charges of criminal conspiracy, fraud and match-fixing against the four. A New Delhi businessman, Rajesh Kalra, and Sanjeev (Sanjiv) Chawla, who lived in London, were also charged.

South Africa was stunned and most sprung to Cronje's defence; there was also a mood of cynicism and suspicion. When did Cronje admit t five days later to taking between $10 000 and $15 000 (when opened it was $8 200) the view was that if such a perceived icon could do this what did it say about others involved in the sport? Were they too, not tainted with the same image of carelessness.

So far the New Delhi police have quite rightly resisted pressure to release the tapes, despite some foolish efforts to coerce them into allowing them to hear the tapes. When this was declined the reporters merely heard the same transcript read by two Asian actors as did others; it was this which had led to the initial confusion that the police had "fabricated" the whole episode. Even South Africa's High Commissioner, Ms Maite Nkoana Mashabane drew similar conclusions, for without an explanation that the transcripts were a re-enactment, the initial cynicism and doubt remained.

Not only that a Durban-based sports hack, Iqbal Khan, sent to New Delhi "to dig out the truth" claimed to know more than most. Which is a rosy but far from factual, view of affairs. In fact it is the New Delhi police who lifted the lid of the operations which are so complexed they need Interpol to smash the evil of the Mumbai underworld run by the faceless, shadowy and criminal figures Dawood Ibrahim and Abu Salem.

All one has to do is read Pradeep's informative account and conclusions in the preface to the revised and updated version of his book which, as with last year's publication, again explains how the criminal element has become involved along with the vast sums of money spent in gambling. Also noted is how an estimated US$227-million is bet on any one-day game in India, which the Times of India estimated in an editorial on April 15 amounted to a staggering US$6-billion a year. And all of it from shady deals and bookies trying to make a bigger buck out of the game than they should be allowed.

It brings us to the point that those acting as custodians of the sport (the ICC) need to answer charges levelled at their competency, especially as they have for years, ignored the problem until now.

In a succinct, carefully drawn parallel, Pradeep pleads for the ICC to tackle the problem then wonders if they will do so. This, of course, were his thoughts before they issued their list of bans after the crisis meeting at Lord's on May 2 and 3.

He also sees how Cronje (having admitted to not being "totally honest") could be made a scapegoat while the "vested interests in cricketing establishments around the globe, who have allowed this virus to grow through a combination of neglect and greed will go unpunished once more".

It is an appeal which needs an honest answer. The King Commission in South Africa could lead to going someway to answering the plea.