Betting's slippery slope

Hansie Cronje apparently fell to an innocent-looking delivery which promised plump takings. The sad reality is that he was revered in South Africa and greatly admired throughout the cricket world for what we thought was an unrelenting commitment to his nation and to winning.

Lord Harris could well have been writing of the 19th century's equivalent of Cronje at his peak in world cricket when he wrote the immortal lines:

`You do well to love cricket, for it is more free from anything sordid, anything dishonourable, than any game in the world. To play it keenly, honourably, generously, self-sacrificingly, is a moral lesson in itself and the classroom is God's air and sunshine. Foster it, my brother, so that it may attract all who can find time to play it; protect it from anything that would sully it, so that it may grow in favour with all men.'

Cronje's fall from grace hurts us all, for it has shown that even the strong-willed amongst us are vulnerable to temptation. Before the betting allegations, he was riding the crest of a wave in his home country. He was to every South African sports lover a hero. He was given almost god-like status in a troubled land struggling to come to terms with real freedom after years of apartheid. To an adoring public, his being led into temptation was like the Pope destroying the church at Calvary or an Israeli rabbi attacking the Wailing Wall with a pickaxe.

Ever painted the perfect ambassador, polite, well spoken, charming, Cronje was perceived to be the ideal captain. His body language on the field sometimes gave the impression that he suppressed anger and that it might one day boil over, yet his team mates and opponents found him highly combative, with an almost obsessive will to win. The United Cricket Board's Managing Director, Dr Ali Bacher, said the day before Cronje confessed his guilt that he was `a man of unquestionable honesty and character'.

Bacher, who has given him huge support throughout his career, had done more than any individual to bring South Africa out of the cricket wilderness and back onto the Test stage. Cronje had been something of a hero to a man who is himself a hero to thousands of South Africans, especially the non-white people of the republic. He would understandably be shattered by Cronje's deception, as are many of us who know Cronje and regard him to be a good bloke.

If Cronje could pull a swifty on Bacher, he could probably con anyone. He exudes charm. There is a firm handshake and eye contact like no other and when he smiles, as he does when he greets you, his whole face ignites. I played against his father, Ewie, in South Africa in 1970 and met his dad again in 1992 on a coaching trip to Bloemfontein. Ewie was then an administrator for Free State. He made 70 not out against Bobby Simpson's Aussies in 1966/67, then laid on a braai (barbecue). A proud man, he will be devastated by Hansie's actions.

The UCB contracted me to work in South Africa in 1992, '95 and '96 with emerging talent, and with the South African squad, at The Wanderers in Johannesburg. Hansie was king. The players rallied round when he spoke and you had the impression that he need only ask and they would do anything for him. Control? Admiration? Whatever, he had his players seemingly 100 per cent behind him.

That is the danger cricket administrations face. The captain exudes such power within a group. Whether players like it or not, they are reluctant to rock the boat with any captain, no matter how strongly they feel injustice, for it becomes a classic case of cutting off one's nose...

The Board asked me to help their Test squad prepare for the 1997/98 Test and one-day series in Australia. I spent 10 days in Perth with the South Africans and I noted their tremendous work ethic and team harmony. During the tour pipe-opener at Lilac Hill, Cronje revealed humility in picking up all the empty cans and rubbish in the special players' enclosure.

I was assured this was not an isolated `show', but the sort of thing he did regularly wherever the team played. If he made a low score, Cronje took out his wrath with a punishing, hard-driven long-distance run. All the while he looked a man with the weight of the world on his broad shoulders. Those staring eyes on the field exuded a mixture of anger and a troubled soul.

I knew not then that he had to contend with the on-going nightmare of being involved in the death of a 10-year-old black girl. Driving Free State's team coach to an away match in Natal, the vehicle struck and killed her. The tragedy cut Cronje to his spiritual core: since that day he has been devoutly religious, a born-again Christian.

He lent me his South African floppy hat in Perth, handing it over in such reluctant fashion, but with such reverence, that I thought I was about to accept the Holy Grail. Now here was a bloke who loved his country. Though I was not privy to the inner circle I saw him as a dedicated, committed cricketer, whose passion for his country's success was all too evident. He played, as he maintains, to win. We perceived him to be unrelentingly committed to that goal.

It is the insidious spread and line betting that can somehow water down the guilt in a player's mind if he so chooses to sell his soul. Apparently those who become involved can rationalise their behaviour. Lose the odd wicket, drop a sitter or bowl a wide. It happens in any session every day, from backyard contests to the Test arena.

We are all human and make mistakes. But in the context of this form of betting, as simple a thing as a wide could mean dollars for you and many more dollars for them. A dropped catch, a run-out, perhaps crucial to the result, no one can tell for sure at the start of a Test. But you can cash in and that is where a bet becomes betrayal. You may lose a session, but it is only one frame in the big picture. So long as you win, your conscience is clear and your bank balance swells.

I shall never forget the Second Test at the SCG in 1997/98. Not because Shane Warne spun Australia to a dizzy victory, but because I have always wondered about that game. There was an air of fear and anxiety in the South African team. They had played well in the one-dayers and fought hard to draw the First Test in Melbourne. But in Sydney they seemed apprehensive. Something was up, but I could not put my finger on it. I indicated to Bacher that this Test match was the most crucial of the tour.

After the team training Cronje had asked: `Do we go with the two spinners?' An odd question given that the pitch was devoid of grass. It would turn prodigiously, albeit slowly. Two spinners, Pat Symcox and Paul Adams, were duly picked, but the make-up of the batting order amazed me. Jonty Rhodes, easily the best player of spin in the team, including Cronje, was left out of the XI.

Rhodes will be remembered in Sydney for his gallant 74 not out against a rampaging Warne on a spiteful turner on the previous tour. Daryll Cullinan, whose problems against the leg-spinner were probably not as insurmountable as they were made out to be, had also been dropped.

The selectors also ignored the claims of the deputy wicket-keeper, Mark Boucher, even then a far superior gloveman and batsman to Dave Richardson whose 'keeping was not up to scratch on that tour and whose batting told us he would not last an over against Warne on any wicket, let alone on this bare Sydney pitch. Lance Klusener, a warrior cricketer if ever there was one, gave way to Adams, and Brian McMillan, a fine batsman and superb slip, kept his place although his bowling had lost its edge. The team's balance was not right.

My job was to help the spinners and to assist Cronje with field placings. He had no great faith in spin. Like his predecessor as captain, Kepler Wessels, he only completely trusted the quicks. It was understandable, given that South Africa had not produced a real top-line spinner since Hugh Tayfield. At least Adams would bowl tightly.

Symcox was supposed to bowl with a high arm outside the right-hander's off stump and turning in. The Aussies were (and still are) vulnerable to this sort of attack. Yet when Steve and Mark Waugh were entrenched in what turned out to be the best partnership of the match, Symcox operated on a leg-stump line to a packed leg-side field. I was horrified by such a ridiculous field placing. The former Test pace bowler Geoff Lawson, then commentating for ABC Radio, quizzed me over the fielding position.

In the wake of what transpired with Cronje, I am highly suspicious of this Test. Little things happened in the sessions which did not `feel right'. At the end of the third day, it was heading for a draw. Remarkably, Glenn McGrath's batting held out on the morning of what was destined to be the last day. I was sitting with Peter Pollock, then the convenor of selectors, and asked why the quicks did not dig one in to McGrath. Ian Healy smashed them about at the other end and, after he fell, only Warne stood between an easy day's batting for South Africa and an unlikely but still remotely possible Australian win.

Gary Kirsten, Adam Bacher and Cronje were out just before lunch. Cronje played an uncharacteristic shot, hitting across a Warne leg-break which curved in flight, as had Herschelle Gibbs. Instead of swatting it high over square leg, as he might have done at any other time, Cronje played tentatively across the line, edged it on to his pad and gave short leg an easy catch. The pitch was so sluggish that any spin Warne managed to obtain was very slow. South Africa's capitulation was simply unacceptable.

Spread and line betting makes cricket vulnerable to a myriad of shady deals which might make an instant fortune for the player `on the take'. But betting and cricket have been synonymous for more than 200 years. Venture down to Lord's on any given match day in 1830 and you would surely notice the Lord Frederick Beauclerk, a doctor of divinity and the vicar of Redbourne in Hertfordshire. Like Cronje, he was perceived as holier-than-thou, yet, like Cronje, his faith and integrity did not quite measure up.

Beauclerk boasted in private that betting on cricket netted him at least `600 guineas a year'. Yet he would stroll down the steps of the Lord's pavilion, turn left, casting a furtive glance in the direction of My Gully, who sat near the bushes, behind which were his two `legs' calling the odds. But there is no evidence from those days of long ago that players of the era were involved. Fuller Pilch and Nicholas Felix were no doubt having enough trouble coping with all manner of fliers and shooters from Alfred Mynn and Co to worry about matters off the field.

More than two decades ago, World Series Cricket did much to improve the players' lot in terms of payment. But it also brought with it the evil, green eye of greed. Some players were paid far more than others to sign for Kerry Packer. The very inequality of this system made some players distrust others. Before the ACB and WSC got together in 1979/80, Packer had succeeded in alienating cricket and cricketers.

Those who remained loyal to the ACB received a little more money, but it still amounted to a pittance and the Packer players enjoyed better money than many could ever have dreamed about. Deryck Murray received his cheque and asked how he could split it up for all members of the West Indian squad. He was told, `Oh no, the cheque is for you alone. It is your season's payment'. When WSC folded and the `war' ended with a coming together of all the players and officials, Kerry Packer held all the aces.

Players from other countries eye Australia with envy, for the Australian players make greater money than their counterparts from elsewhere. Cronje was treated like a god at home, yet he probably generated the equivalent of less than A$600,000 in South Africa. That is a fortune at home, but in Australia many of the top players would earn far in excess of that figure.

If a player `on the take' was involved in tip-offs in every session of a Test at the rate of, say, US$15,000 a time, he could make a fortune in just a few Tests and a truckload of one-dayers. Yet for each payout of US$15,000 the bookie would make a hell of a lot more, maybe millions. For Cronje to risk his cricketing future, his status as resident South African sporting idol, his fall from grace within his own family circle, we are talking more than US$15,000. Aren't we?

How far back do we investigate this betting scandal? However seemingly innocent the Lillee-Marsh betting incident, backing England at 500/1 at Headingley in 1981 might have been, was it the spark to ignite interest for some bookie in Bombay? Imagine the odds you might have received on England losing the Centenary Test of 1976/77 by 45 runs, the very same margin as the first ever Test at the MCG in 1877. What I do recall about that scenario was Dennis Lillee having an lbw appeal upheld against Alan Knott when the ball seemed to be clearly missing leg stump. But we are given to believe all this sordid stuff was not among us then.

Then there was the tied Test in Madras, the umpire's finger shot up seemingly before a Greg Matthews off-break thudded into the pad. That was 1986/87. Was the batsman clearly out? Was it an umpire's marvellous sense of history, or was an Indian bookie about to collect umpteen millions of dollars on a tied Test match?

The ICC and the Test nations must act in consultation with Interpol, tax investigators and police fraud squads in every member nation. An investigation has been set up and it must look into everyone connected with cricket in every Test nation. Any nation which does not allow such an inquiry should be struck from the list of Test nations, just as South Africa was ostracised over apartheid. If cricket cannot win this betting war, we will never stop paying the price.