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Was Hansie Cronje scapegoated in order to save other South African players?

Savak

Savak

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I have seen a few documentaries on him and Kepler Wessels even came out saying he suspected Cronje was involved in match fixing, spot fixing as far back as 1994. It is reported many times of many numerous attempts he made to lure his fellow players into fixing offers under the guise of a joke and the fact that the entire team in 1996 discussed a fixing offer in India where even the coach was present.

Serious questions are justified and how is it possible that it is only Cronje who fixed, took money but the rest of his team was clean? I don't completely buy it to be honest as one person alone cannot be solely responsible for fixing and spot fixing, it requires atleast 5-6 players involved at the very least.

It is the same case as Butt, Asif and Amir where only they were the ones caught but since there was no solid proof against anyone else the rest escaped detailed scrutiny.

One bookmaker when interviewed in the documentary even laughed and said that such was Cronje's standing in South African Cricket, had he not panicked and confessed to everything stupidly, it is very possible that the whole thing might have even died down and could have been burried in numerous loopholes.
 
It is difficult to prove fixing, and a lot of fixing has gone unpunished in international cricket.

But its a much cleaner cricket now, as a result of his confessions, etc. Even if some players engage in spot fixing here and there, it is not that criminal as match fixing was, for obvious reasons.
 
There is a popular theory that because Cronje went back on his word and refused to fix a few Sharjah Cup matches in 2000, his book makers got angry and in order to get back at him and to teach him a lesson, they informed the police in India who in return played Poker with Cronje and came out in the media saying they had tapes to prove he was guilty of match fixing, spot fixing and Cronje stupidly panicked and confessed rather than demanding that the police come out with the tapes. To date no one has heard of the tapes. Also an audio recording in the West is ruled as inadmissible as evidence in a court of law if the tapes were not authorized by the courts in the first place and therefore the whole thing could have been burried and dead in various legal loopholes.

Something to think about. Not sure if Cronje had good advisors around him or whether he should have consulted a few people including his lawyers about the truth and his confession before actually going through with it.
 
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of one of cricket’s darkest days - the fixed Centurion Test between South Africa and England, which led to Hansie Cronje being banned from the sport for life can we if cricket is any safer from corruption today?
 
MenInG said:
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of one of cricket’s darkest days - the fixed Centurion Test between South Africa and England, which led to Hansie Cronje being banned from the sport for life can we if cricket is any safer from corruption today?
Click to expand...
The death of Hansie Cronje bears extraordinary similarity to the killing of Mozambique President Samora Machel in South Africa a decade and a half earlier.

This has led to suggestions - which won’t go away - that the same MO was used to kill him. We will never know.

My personal opinion is that world cricket was riddled with corruption in the late 1990’s with no team spared.

I think red ball cricket is barely fixed at all nowadays but I believe that white ball cricket is more vulnerable to corruption now than it was then, because an Auction Model for T20 leagues provides a simple way to pay cricketers “legitimately” for services rendered.

In effect, it is an invitation to launder money.
 
Hansie Cronje scandal: 20 years on

It was the match-fixing scandal that shocked cricket to its core.

Two decades on from the infamous Centurion Test, which led to Hansie Cronje being banned from the sport for life, the Sky Cricket podcast looks back on a defining moment in the game.

Pundits Nasser Hussain and Mike Atherton - who both played in England's two-wicket win at Supersport Park - reflect on the Test in the company of Ian Ward and cricket writer Vithushan Ehantharajah.

"What a quite remarkable week that was," said Hussain. "The first day we played, South Africa got to about 155-6 and then it rained - every night the storms would come in and it just looked like we weren't going to have a game at all.

"And then on the last day, we were warming up and Hansie went up to Alec (Stewart) and said 'speak to Nasser and we'll do what we do in county cricket and forfeit an innings each and we will set up a game'.

"I said to Alec - 'no, tell Hansie this isn't county cricket, it's a Test match'. Also we were 2-0 down and I didn't want to go 3-0 down!"

What began as a spicy pitch looked so flat after the incessant overnight rain that Hussain decided to send Atherton, along with Phil Tufnell, to negotiate

The result was that England were left to chase a target of 249 in 76 overs - a total they eventually surpassed for the loss of eight wickets off 75.1 overs.

Nasser added: "It wasn't a case of Hansie trying to lose the game but we found out years later that he'd been in touch with a bookmaker - there had to be a result as there was so much money on the draw. He was told 'get a result in this game'."

- The impact the anti-corruption unit has had on the game and why Athers believes international cricket is "pretty clean"

https://www.skysports.com/cricket/news/12123/11909081/hansie-cronje-scandal-20-years-on
 
Professional cricket, like most other sports, has come to a grinding halt in the wake of the coronavirus crisis which has also forced lockdowns in several places.

In the dearth of live cricket action, we keep taking you back every day, offering glimpses of history.

Today, April 11 is actually a black day in the history of the game as on this day 20 years ago, Hansie Cronje was sacked as South Africa captain during one of cricket's most shameful episodes.

Hansie Cronje: one of international cricket's role model, a South African great at that point in time whose towering stature in the sport diminished to being one of a match fixer in rather no time.

In April 2000, the game was brought to disrepute when Delhi police charged Hansie Cronje of match-fixing during an ODI series in India that year. It was once again an Indian bookie, this time a businessman named Sanjay Chawla who was in touch with Cronje.

After initially denying the charges, Cronje accepted to providing information regarding forecast to the bookie during the ODI series in India. Players like Pat Symcox and Herschelle Gibbs testified before The King Commission that Cronje had asked them to get involved in corrupt activities in the past.

Cronje confessed to taking bribes since 1996 and also accused Mohammad Azharuddin of introducing him to an Indian bookie. Cronje said that the bookie had offered him to throw a Test match during South Africa's tour of India in 1996.

Notably, Manoj Prabhakar, who had accused Kapil Dev of asking him to underperform, was later found guilty of being in touch with Indian bookies along with Ajay Jadeja and Ajay Sharma. All three of them were handed bans.

Just as when Hansie Cronje's legacy was growing into a legendary figure, the match fixing scandal rocked South Africa cricket and also tarnished the image of one of their most loved sporting icons Hansie Cronje besides other prominent South African cricketers.

https://www.indiatoday.in/sports/cr...-over-match-fixing-scandal-1665884-2020-04-11
 
The title of this thread is chilling.

There is one aspect that is always ignored. The future ICC Chief Executive Dave Richardson was the wicketkeeper in Cronje’s team, and while he didn’t play in the one match in which Cronje confessed to discussing a matchfix in a team meeting, it’s hard to imagine that his teammates would not have told him.....unless they were used to it.

I remain convinced that most of the 1999 World Cup was fixed and that the senior players of 1999 (Richardson was already retired, I don’t mean him) went on to run much of world cricket.

I reckon less than 1% of cricket’s fixers of 1990-2020 have ever been brought to justice.
 
There is also Neil Manthorp's account of how he called Gary Kirsten when the story broke that the Indian police was accusing Cronje. According to Manthorp, there was a slight pause before Kirsten responded and his first words were: 'Who else?'

The whole King Commission was a sham exercise in burying the hatchet with the minimum possible political and reputational damage. Players closest to Cronje like Donald and Rhodes weren't even asked to appear.
 
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This is the first big cricketing and probably sporting controversy I remember and still the saddest. On topic, there is no doubt, I mean we all know Gibbs was involved and given immunity; we know Donald and Rhodes names were thrown out but they were barely cross examined.

As for cricket now, is it cleaner? I highly doubt it, I just think the fixing has become more sophisticated and better protected. Look at all that has happened across several seasons of IPL cricket, the huge amount of money involved has led to the scapegoating of unknowns and the protection of commodities like Dhoni and Dravid. We've had fixing in County cricket, further accusations in SA domestic games, the PCB want to bring a known fixer back into the fold...and so on.

Football and boxing are probably worse but the fixing problem in cricket shows no sign of disappearing.
 
Asifnow said:
This is the first big cricketing and probably sporting controversy I remember and still the saddest. On topic, there is no doubt, I mean we all know Gibbs was involved and given immunity; we know Donald and Rhodes names were thrown out but they were barely cross examined.

As for cricket now, is it cleaner? I highly doubt it, I just think the fixing has become more sophisticated and better protected. Look at all that has happened across several seasons of IPL cricket, the huge amount of money involved has led to the scapegoating of unknowns and the protection of commodities like Dhoni and Dravid. We've had fixing in County cricket, further accusations in SA domestic games, the PCB want to bring a known fixer back into the fold...and so on.

Football and boxing are probably worse but the fixing problem in cricket shows no sign of disappearing.
Click to expand...

Eh, say what now?
 
Infamous cricket bookie Sanjeev Chawla has been granted bail by a Delhi Court after recently being extradited to India to face charges of match-fixing.

Chawla was the ringleader of the match-fixing scandal that involved former Proteas captain Hansie Cronje in 2000.

The pair conspired to fix matches on South Africa's tour to India in that same year.

Subsequently, batsman Herschelle Gibbs and bowler Henry Williams were banned for six months each and fined by South African authorities for their part in the scandal.

The court stated: "...in view of Covid-19 pandemic which is not likely to end before one or two years as per WHO, and in view of the fact that no cricket match was thrown or lost pursuant to alleged match fixing, the accused Sanjeev Kumar Chawla is ordered to be released on bail."

Cronje, who played 68 Tests and 118 ODIs for the Proteas, died in an aeroplane crash in 2002.

https://www.sport24.co.za/Cricket/hansies-alleged-bookie-granted-bail-in-delhi-20200502
 
Other players could've been involved. It was a corrupt period. Hansie's death was also quite suspicious.
 
11th April, 2000

The beginning of the end for Hansie Cronje, who quit today after it was revealed that he was at the heart of a match-fixing scandal that haunted the game for years after. In early April reports had emerged from India that he was involved, largely as a result of a taped phone conversation. He denied it, and such was his reputation that he was almost universally believed - Ali Bacher, managing director of the UCBSA, spoke of Cronje's "unquestionable integrity and honesty". Then, four days after the accusation, Cronje confessed in a 3am phone call to Bacher that he had not been "entirely honest". He was immediately stripped of the captaincy, and in subsequent testimony to the government-appointed King Commission revealed, sometimes in tears, further details of his involvement with bookmakers in match-fixing.
 
It was said he once quoted Shakespeare at a dinner party for 45 minutes.

He was larger-than-life but fell to his vices.
 
What I don't understand is how did the attempted 'perfect fix' in 1996 not blow up in a bigger way?
If Captain calls full team and tells them, there is no scope any more for misunderstanding or silly offhand comments. It is clear cut cheating.

Surely some disgruntled teammate would have anonymously ratted out on being dropped? Would have 100% happened in India/Pak teams.
 
For sure, I remember the controversy like it was yesterday and Gibbs was most definitely let off for testifying....who knows who or what else they had in the back? That whole debacle which included mainly South AFrican and Indian players is the darkest stain in this sports history.
 
mastimasti said:
For sure, I remember the controversy like it was yesterday and Gibbs was most definitely let off for testifying....who knows who or what else they had in the back? That whole debacle which included mainly South AFrican and Indian players is the darkest stain in this sports history.
Click to expand...

There were quite a few Pakistanis that got off unscathed as well, some of them are in quite high-profile positions within the game today.
 
Last Monetarist said:
There were quite a few Pakistanis that got off unscathed as well, some of them are in quite high-profile positions within the game today.
Click to expand...

But I am speaking about people who were actually convicted or had cases squashed for testifying. Those were saffers and Indians. Not sure which Pakistani was in such a position at the time. Could you enlighten us?
 
mastimasti said:
But I am speaking about people who were actually convicted or had cases squashed for testifying. Those were saffers and Indians. Not sure which Pakistani was in such a position at the time. Could you enlighten us?
Click to expand...

Cronje's testimony related to how Salim Malik introduced him to bookies in 1994, the King Commission is a matter of public record. The fact that Malik wasn't asked to testify to corroborate these accounts is just more proof of how the trial was an exercise in damage limitation.
 
Last Monetarist said:
Cronje's testimony related to how Salim Malik introduced him to bookies in 1994, the King Commission is a matter of public record. The fact that Malik wasn't asked to testify to corroborate these accounts is just more proof of how the trial was an exercise in damage limitation.
Click to expand...

My memory may be sketchy but wasn't Malik banned from the sport? Last I heard from my Pakistani friends he has been a pariah in Pakistan for 25 years or so.

So who else is it? You did say there were a few.
 
mastimasti said:
My memory may be sketchy but wasn't Malik banned from the sport? Last I heard from my Pakistani friends he has been a pariah in Pakistan for 25 years or so.

So who else is it? You did say there were a few.
Click to expand...

Ah, so you're another one that loves to indulge in sophistry. No need to take this debate further.
 
In hindsight , some of the matches from 1999 world cup do look dodgy but the deserving team won the whole bloody thing anyway. SA vs ZIM looked very dodgy to say the least.
 
2002 At the age of 32, and just 26 months after his dramatic fall from grace, Hansie Cronje died in a plane crash near George, a town in South Africa's Western Cape

==

Sad day for cricket and a tragic end to a somewhat tainted career and life.
 
If Cronje had lived, I suspect he'd have received amnesty and allowed to work in cricket given the depth of feeling in white (especially Afrikaaner) South Africa in support of his actions. Cronje, like most narcissists, had a certain charisma that could influence all around him.
 
Last Monetarist said:
If Cronje had lived, I suspect he'd have received amnesty and allowed to work in cricket given the depth of feeling in white (especially Afrikaaner) South Africa in support of his actions. Cronje, like most narcissists, had a certain charisma that could influence all around him.
Click to expand...

Like Amir.
 
Last Monetarist said:
If Cronje had lived, I suspect he'd have received amnesty and allowed to work in cricket given the depth of feeling in white (especially Afrikaaner) South Africa in support of his actions. Cronje, like most narcissists, had a certain charisma that could influence all around him.
Click to expand...
Agree with this.

Cronje had certain aura around him despite him being nowhere near quite a few players in that SA side either as a bowler or as a batsman. Was a huge fan of him and was heart broken like so many others when that story broke.
 
2000 (11th April)

The beginning of the end for Hansie Cronje, who quit today after it was revealed that he was at the heart of a match-fixing scandal that haunted the game for years after. In early April reports had emerged from India that he was involved, largely as a result of a taped phone conversation. He denied it, and such was his reputation that he was almost universally believed - Ali Bacher, managing director of the UCBSA, spoke of Cronje's "unquestionable integrity and honesty". Then, four days after the accusation, Cronje confessed in a 3am phone call to Bacher that he had not been "entirely honest". He was immediately stripped of the captaincy, and in subsequent testimony to the government-appointed King Commission revealed, sometimes in tears, further details of his involvement with bookmakers in match-fixing.
 
Hansie was a great leader not just captain , he had players who were much better than him but geled the team well , under his team did well. Its really sad that a person will always be remembered as a cheat and traitor.
 
Born today - a legacy of dishonor for Hansie
 
Traitor,caught with no chances of escape ...and the natural judgement came later coz he made us believe for 8good years made the cricketing community fools
 
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On this day (11 April)

2000

The beginning of the end for Hansie Cronje, who quit today after it was revealed that he was at the heart of a match-fixing scandal that haunted the game for years after. In early April reports had emerged from India that he was involved, largely as a result of a taped phone conversation. He denied it, and such was his reputation that he was almost universally believed - Ali Bacher, managing director of the UCBSA, spoke of Cronje's "unquestionable integrity and honesty". Then, four days after the accusation, Cronje confessed in a 3am phone call to Bacher that he had not been "entirely honest". He was immediately stripped of the captaincy, and in subsequent testimony to the government-appointed King Commission revealed, sometimes in tears, further details of his involvement with bookmakers in match-fixing.
 
Court Says Some Games Fixed During India vs South Africa Series In 2000A Delhi court, which framed charges against four accused in the 2000 cricket match-fixing scandal case

They said some matches of the India-South Africa test and ODI series were fixed and attempts were made to fix other fixtures.

A Delhi court, which framed charges against four accused in the 2000 cricket match-fixing scandal case, said some matches of the India-South Africa test and ODI series were fixed and attempts were made to fix other fixtures. The two tests and five one-day internationals were held from February 19 to March 19, 2000. The court said, "Investigation also concluded that some of the matches were fixed and an attempt was made to fix some other matches." It said noting the investigation that in the first test match at Mumbai from February 24 to 28, "It was decided that the South African Team will not score more than 250 runs in an inning and the same is evident from the statement of Pieter Strydom and Hansie Cronje before the King's Commission." In the second Test match at Bengaluru from March 2 to 6, the court noted that, "Though Hansie Cronje had spoken to other players as per the statements made before the King's Commission, this match was not fixed although an attempt was made to fix it." Noting the evidence before it, the court said that the first ODI on March 9 in Kochi was a fixed match.

Source: NDTV
 
Say what you will about him as a person, but he was an incredible captain and leader. And a very resourceful batter too. Heck, he was pretty handy with the ball too.
 
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