Hansie Cronje
© Getty Images Cronje, Wessel Johannes, South Africa's cricket captain in a record 53 Tests and 138 one-day internationals between 1994 and 2000, died on June 1, 2002 when the cargo plane in which he was travelling crashed on
15-Apr-2003
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At first he had hotly denied charges levelled by the New Delhi police, who during
a phone-tapping operation in March 2000 heard him conspiring with an Indian book-maker, Sanjeev Chawla, to predetermine performances. And such was his standing as
a player, captain and sporting ambassador for post-apartheid South Africa that few in
the cricket world doubted him, preferring to heap scorn on the Indian investigation.
Ali Bacher, managing director of the United Cricket Board of South Africa, spoke of
Cronje's "unquestionable integrity and honesty". Then, four days after the accusation,
Cronje confessed in a 3 a.m. phone call to Bacher that he had not been "entirely
honest". He was immediately stripped of the captaincy, as his side prepared for a one-day
series against Australia, and in subsequent testimony to the government-appointed
King Commission revealed, sometimes in tears, further details of his involvement
with bookmakers in match-fixing. The cricket world listened agog as much as aghast.
The game's reputation, it seemed, was at an all-time low. Cronje's life and career were
in tatters.
It had been so different a decade earlier when, aged 21, he was given the captaincy
of Orange Free State. His upbringing and education had groomed him for leadership.
His family were of solid, middle-class Afrikaner stock, deeply religious and sporty:
Hansie's father, Ewie, had been an off-spinning all-rounder for Free State in the 1960s.
The importance of discipline, dedication and hard work had been inculcated in Hansie
at an early age, honed at Grey College in his native Bloemfontein, and was made
manifest in 1991-92, his second year in charge, when the young Free State team,
coached by Eddie Barlow to a level of physical and mental fitness rare even for South
African cricket, finished runners-up in the Castle Bowl (formerly the Currie Cup) and
won the limited-overs Nissan Shield. The next two seasons brought Castle Cup and
one-day doubles, followed by one-day trophies in subsequent years - a total of seven
titles in five seasons. International commitments meant the young captain was not ever-present,
but his influence remained inspirational.
He had made his debut at 18 in January 1988, joining his brother, Frans, for the
Currie Cup games against Transvaal and Northern Transvaal. Innings of two and 16,
then a pair, were an inauspicious start for someone who would notch up a record 15
first-class hundreds for the Free State, as well as six in one-day competitions. The
following season, his unbeaten 105 against Impalas took Orange Free State into the
Benson and Hedges Trophy final, where Frans's old school-friend Allan Donald blew
Western Province aside with four for 18. Hansie's maiden first-class hundred followed
in January 1990 when, captaining South African Universities, he hit 104 against Mike
Gatting's English rebels.
Inside the year, South Africa had been readmitted to full membership of the ICC,
and the 22-year-old Cronje was one of four non-playing observers - two white, two
non-white - taken to India with the first post-isolation side. Three months later, he
was bowling five tidy overs for 17 as South Africa, captained by Kepler Wessels,
shocked Australia with a nine-wicket victory at Sydney in the World Cup. He played
in eight of their nine games in that tournament, including the infamous semi-final
against England in which South Africa's target was adjusted after rain from 22 off 13
balls to 21 off one. Then he went to the Caribbean for South Africa's first Test since
readmission, and their first ever against West Indies. Cronje scored only five and two,
but in 68 Tests would go on to make 3,714 runs at 36.41, as well as taking 43 wickets
at 29.95; in 188 one-day internationals he made 5,565 runs at 38.64, took 114 wickets
at 34.78 with an economy rate of 4.44, and held 72 catches. His first-class figures
from 184 games were 12,103 runs at 43.69 and 116 wickets at 34.43.
With his aggressive batting, intelligent medium-pace bowling and brilliant fielding,
Cronje was a formidable competitor. The Indians discovered as much when they visited
South Africa in 1992-93 and he took a career-best five for 32 in the opening one-day
international, won it with a six with three balls to spare, and conceded only 3.59 an
over in the seven-match series. That tour also proved he had the mettle for Test cricket.
Going in in the second over at Port Elizabeth, he stayed eight and three-quarter hours
(411 balls) until he was last out for 135, the first and highest of his six Test centuries.
When Donald took his match haul to 12 wickets, South Africa had their first Test
victory of the new era. Cronje's second hundred, 122, came in Colombo the following
September to set up South Africa's biggest Test win - an innings and 208 runs - and
Sri Lanka's heaviest defeat.
His good form initially held when, the youngest in the side at 24, he was Wessels's
vice-captain in Australia in 1994-95. After Wessels broke a finger in the Sydney Test,
Cronje took charge on the tense final morning to such effect that Australia, chasing
117 for victory with six wickets in hand, were dismissed for 111; his direct hit to run
out Shane Warne from wide mid-off struck a crucial blow. He also took over during
the one-day tournament when further injuries forced Wessels home, and at Adelaide
became South Africa's second-youngest Test captain, after Murray Bisset in 1898-99.
But there was no fairytale: Australia won by 191 runs to square the series.
Wessels was captain again when the two countries resumed hostilities in South Africa,
and Cronje wasted no time extracting revenge for Adelaide. In six games in 14 days,
he hammered the Aussie bowling for 721 runs: he began with 112 from 120 balls, the
higher of his two one-day international hundreds, hit 251, his maiden double-hundred,
for Orange Free State and finished with 122 in the First Test, which South Africa won
by 197 runs. The double-hundred - next highest score was Gerry Liebenberg's 39 -
remained Cronje's best.
This was a period of transition for Australian fast bowling, though. Cronje was given
a harder time in England in 1994 and managed only 90 runs in six Test innings as
Devon Malcolm and the young Darren Gough exposed a technical weakness against
short-pitched bowling directed at his ribs. Spin gave him no such problems, and his
armoury against it included a ferocious slog-sweep over mid-wicket, played on one
knee. When he made what was then Test cricket's third-fastest fifty, off 31 balls at
Centurion in 1997-98, he reached it by hitting Muttiah Muralitharan, the world's best
off-spinner, for 4666 off successive balls.
In 1995, he expunged his unhappy introduction to English conditions by making
1,362 first-class runs at 50.44 in a one-off season for Leicestershire, whose cricket
manager Jack Birkenshaw and all-rounder Gordon Parsons, Cronje's brother-in-law
since 1991, participated in Orange Free State's triumphs. Among his four hundreds
was 213 against Somerset at Weston-super-Mare. But it would take him ten Tests and
until 1998 to reach 50 against England, whereupon he did so five times on the trot:
81 in South Africa's win at Lord's, 69 not out at Old Trafford, 126 and 67 at Trent
Bridge, and 57 (plus a duck) at Headingley, where England took the series 2-1 with
help from some inept umpiring. He was South Africa's top-scorer, with 401 runs at
66.83, but it was generally accepted that his unenterprising captaincy had let the rubber
slip away. Instead of penetration he went for strangulation, setting defensive fields for
his seam bowlers and encouraging them to bowl wide of off stump: what Bob Woolmer,
South Africa's coach, called "aggressive containment".
Yet when Cronje succeeded Wessels in 1994-95, and began the partnership with
Woolmer that masterminded South Africa's tactics until the 1999 World Cup, he was
welcomed as an adventurous captain; one prepared to gamble. In his first series, against
New Zealand in South Africa, he became the first captain since W. G. Grace to win
a three-match rubber after being one down. When the teams met again at Auckland
in March 1995, Cronje's pre-lunch declaration, setting New Zealand 275 to win in 63
overs, was the catalyst for South Africa's 93-run victory. Something saturnine in his
demeanour, however, spoke of arrogance and calculated self-control; his dour expression
suggested few concessions to humour or emotion. Yet there were times when the
composure snapped. Shortly after becoming South Africa's captain, he received a one-match
ban for dissent on dismissal in a Castle Cup game. When the umpires rightly
ruled Mark Waugh not out after inadvertently hitting his wicket at Adelaide in 1997-
98, and he went on to save the Test, Cronje hurled a stump through their dressing-room
door. At Cape Town in 1995-96, he was fined for imposing his will on umpire
Dave Orchard to refer a run-out to the television umpire after Orchard ruled England's
Graham Thorpe not out; the decision was overturned and South Africa went on to take
the match and the series.
He could certainly be articulate and persuasive. The England bowler Angus Fraser
recalled him holding an audience in thrall for 40 minutes, without notes, and reciting
"word for word" from Hamlet. "His pre-match talks were often inspirational," Woolmer
said, "and he led from the front." His players revered him. The Western Province seamer
Craig Matthews credited Cronje with changing his life: "He actually persuaded me
that I was good enough to play international cricket." At Cronje's funeral, Shaun
Pollock, his successor as national captain, spoke of his love of practical jokes, often
used to make newcomers feel at home. Pollock recounted being told to field next to
a certain sponsor's advert, only to discover the sponsor had boards scattered all round
the ground. As with most great leaders, Cronje's personality comprised a complex
skein of qualities.
His captaincy record brooks few arguments. South Africa won 27 and lost only 11
of his 53 Tests in charge, with series victories over every opponent except Australia;
in 138 one-day internationals there were 99 wins, as well as a tie. His record made
a nonsense of the South African board's decision to appoint him for only the first two
Tests against England in 1999-2000, even allowing for a downturn in his form and
his apprehensions about the UCBSA's politically motivated policy of selection on
racial quotas. Although he was later confirmed as captain for all the Tests and
one-day games, his take on the turn of events was apparent in his brooding presence
and the fact that he openly flirted with an offer to succeed Duncan Fletcher as
Glamorgan coach.
He was still coming to terms, too, with that cataclysmic tie against Australia that
cost South Africa a place in the 1999 World Cup final and dashed his boyhood dreams
of leading his country to World Cup glory. With one run needed to win their semi-final,
and three balls still in hand, South Africa's last pair, Lance Klusener and Donald,
contrived the most fatal of run-outs. Cronje, who had been given out for a duck caught
off his boot, was magnanimous in defeat as ever, but nothing could mask his anguish.
Australia remained his bête noire.
He did outdo his Australian rivals Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh in winning a Test
series in India, in 2000. South Africa won 2-0 and ended India's sequence of 14
unbeaten home series since 1987. But in that moment of triumph the seeds of his
tragedy were quickly taking root. Ensnared in illicit dealings with sub-continental
bookmakers after Mohammad Azharuddin introduced him to the match-fixer M. K.
Gupta on South Africa's previous tour of India, in 1996, Cronje was now in cahoots
with Sanjeev Chawla. Cronje unsuccessfully approached Pieter Strydom to under-perform
in the First Test; before the Second he asked Mark Boucher, Jacques Kallis
and Klusener if they were interested in throwing the game for money. They put it down
as another of Hansie's practical jokes. It was not until the final one-day game at Nagpur
that he struck lucky, getting Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams to play to plan for
$US15,000 apiece. Gibbs was supposed to be out for less than 20 and Williams to
concede more than 50. That the plan went awry was ethically immaterial. He had lured
two non-white players, the most vulnerable of his charges in socio-economic terms, at
the very time he was supporting South Africa's development programme to bring young
black cricketers into the first-class game. When it emerged that he told Chawla he
needed $US25,000 for each player, so guaranteeing himself a $US20,000 cut, Cronje's
greed was compliant with his guilt. Gibbs and Williams subsequently received six-month
suspensions from international cricket.
Granted immunity from prosecution, Cronje told the King Commission he received
around $US140,000 from bookmakers, including $US110,000 from Gupta for infor-mation
on team selection, daily forecasts and when he would declare against India at
Cape Town in January 1997. He denied ever fixing the actual result of a match. He
also admitted telling the South African team, before the Mohinder Amarnath benefit
game at Mumbai in December 1996, that there was $US200,000 (some sources said
$250,000) on the table if they played badly. The team actually debated whether to
accept the money before rejecting it; no one reported the matter to the authorities.
Some of them thought the offer of a bribe reflected South Africa's coming of age in
international cricket.
When Cronje rejected further advances from Gupta in November 1997, that might
have ended his perfidy. But, as he told Justice King, he had "an unfortunate love of
money... I am not addicted to alcohol or nicotine, but I believe this is very similar to
an alcohol problem." Even so, it was small beer, certainly in terms of personal gain,
that made him come off the wagon in January 2000. In response to a late-night
visit from a South African bookmaker, Marlon Aronstam, he persuaded Nasser Hussain
to make a match of the rain-ruined Centurion Test on the fifth day with a double
forfeiture of innings - something not only without precedent in Test history but also
outside the Laws. Aronstam had planned to back both sides at long odds and, even
though the forfeiture deal was struck too late for him to place his bets, Cronje was
given 53,000 rand (approximately £5,000) and a leather jacket for his wife. He was
also acclaimed for his enterprising captaincy by unsuspecting commentators who
welcomed England's win - South Africa had already taken the series - as a victory
for common sense and the game. A fortnight later Cronje was meeting Chawla in
Durban and leaving his hotel room with some $US15,000 tucked in a mobile-phone
container. The die was cast.
Neither Justice King nor many others believed they had heard the full story, but
enough was known for Cronje to receive a life ban from all cricketing activities. The
Qayyum Report had already recommended a life ban for Pakistan's former captain
Salim Malik; India's Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma would receive similar sentences
before the year was out. And the ICC would eventually publish their own report into
corruption in the game and implement a range of measures designed to keep the
bookmakers at bay.
Meanwhile the most intriguing question - why he did it - remained an enigma. In
multi-media interviews between his testimony and his ban in October, reputed to
have netted a further £100,000, Cronje talked of "greed, stupidity and the lure of
easy money" and claimed "I was arrogant enough to think I would get away with it".
A born-again Christian who wore a bracelet with the initials WWJD - What Would
Jesus Do? - he talked of how Satan had entered his world when he took his eyes
off Jesus and his "whole world turned dark". There was something pre-Christian in
this, an echo of Greek heroes blaming the gods rather than themselves for their
misfortunes.
Cronje's appeal against his life ban was rejected by the Pretoria High Court in
October 2001, and while there was talk of his having some future role in cricket,
maybe coaching or in the media, he began to build a life away from the game. He
enrolled on a Masters degree course, and in February 2002 joined the Johannesburg-based
firm Bell Equipment, which specialised in earth-moving machinery, as financial
manager. At the time of his death he was commuting weekly to and from his home
on the exclusive Fancourt Estate in George. That fateful weekend, he had hitched a
ride with the two pilots of an Air Quarius Hawker Siddeley turboprop after his scheduled
flight had been grounded by a hailstorm - a risk-taker to the end.
More than a thousand mourners filled the Grey College Chapel for Cronje's funeral,
while a thousand more outside watched the service, which was televised nationally, on
large screens. It was reported that members of the UCBSA, critical earlier of their
captain's betrayal, had been told they would not be welcome, but Bertha Cronje,
Hansie's widow, said he would not have agreed with such a ban. The divisions were
forgotten as South Africa, a nation rebuilding on forgiveness and reconciliation,
mourned, in Gary Kirsten's words, "a great cricketer, a great performer and a great
on-field leader of his country". It was elsewhere that cricket would still consider Hansie
Cronje a tarnished hero.