The King commission of inquiry this week heard evidence that implies Hansie Cronje became involved in match-fixing shortly after taking over the captaincy of the national cricket squad
Peter Robinson
Hansie Cronje admitted to security consultant Rory Steyn that the tape recordings held by Indian police were authentic, although they had been edited, the King commission of inquiry heard on Thursday.
Giving evidence to the commission, Steyn, in Durban in April to ensure the security of the visiting Australian team, said that he had been summoned to room 1720 by Cronje in the early hours of April 11. Cronje was very emotional, said Steyn, who was then handed a statement by Cronje.
In the presence of Steyn, Cronje altered the figures $20E000 to $25 000 to read $10E000 to $15E000, this being the amount handed to Cronje by Hamed “Banjo” Cassim at the Wanderers nets before the one-day international against Zimbabwe in January.
Steyn said Cronje told him that Cassim had approached Cronje at the nets and said, with reference to the Centurion Park Test: “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to declare?” Cronje’s response was: “Why didn’t you ask me?”
The statement read by Steyn was the confession later faxed to Rhema Church leader Ray McCauley in which Cronje blames the devil for his fall from grace. Steyn said that Cronje had burst into tears “two or three times” during their meeting, and he also said that Cronje told him that “the lies were eating me up”.
According to Steyn, Cronje gave three reasons for coming clean. He said he could not continue with the lies, he wished to relieve the pressure his family were living under and he wanted to clear the names of his team-mates who had been named in connection with the Indian police investigation.
Earlier, South African batsman Daryll Cullinan’s version of the team meeting in Bombay in 1996 was that it had been “a stroke of genius” on the part of Cronje, who had wanted to test his team as to their willingness to accept bribes.
Cullinan had not included this view in his statement to the commission, chaired by Judge Edwin King, and under cross- examination from Jeremy Gauntlet, representing the United Cricket Board, became confused and appeared not to know exactly what he thought.
He persisted in saying, though, that he thought Cronje had told the team of an offer to throw a game as part of a “moral test” and said he had left the meeting feeling much better for being there. Cullinan was one of the players who spoke up against accepting the bribe.
The commission had earlier from former South African bowler Pat Symcox that Cronje may have been in contact with bookmakers as early as January 1995, nearly two years before the South African team debated an offer to throw a one-day match in Mumbai.
But even though there are four teams of lawyers – not including Shamila Batohi, the KwaZulu-Natal prosecutor who is leading evidence for the commission of inquiry into match-fixing, chaired by Judge Edwin King – none saw fit to challenge Symcox’s vagueness about the date of the Mandela Cup final against Pakistan.
Symcox claimed he had been called to Cronje’s hotel room in Cape Town in 1997 to hear of an offer to throw the Mandela Cup final. There was, however, no Mandela Cup final in 1997, nor even a one-day match against Pakistan in Cape Town about that time.
There was, on the other hand, a Mandela Cup final against Pakistan in 1995 and another triangular final against Pakistan in Cape Town in 1998.
Both games were won by South Africa. Symcox played in the first game, but not in the second.
The significance, though, is that if Symcox was talking about the 1995 match he was, effectively, claiming that Cronje was in contact with bookmakers in only his first season as captain.
Cronje took over from Kepler Wessels at the end of 1994, after the latter had led South Africa to a 1-1 Test series draw in England and, on his last tour, a 0-6 drubbing in a triangular series in Pakistan that also involved Australia. This triangular series was Bob Woolmer’s first involvement with the South Africans.
After this trip to Pakistan, Wessels stood down to be succeeded by Cronje and if Symcox is referring to the 1995 game, when Salim Malik, now banned from cricket for life, captained Pakistan, then the 1994/95 season may have been the dirtiest the game has known.
In September 1994, Australians Mark Waugh and Shane Warne were approached by a bookmaker known only as “John” in Sri Lanka to provide information about the weather and pitch.
Later that summer, both were offered $100E000 by Salim to play badly in a Test match against Pakistan. They refused this offer, but were later fined, in secret, by the Australian Cricket Board for their involvement with “John”. This punishment, however, was not revealed to the public until 1998.
Salim then led a team to South Africa and Zimbabwe in early 1995. After breezing through their opening games in the Mandela Cup, Salim won the toss twice in the final matches in Cape Town and Johannesburg and incomprehensiblysent South Africa in to bat.
South Africa won both games by a mile, but there was already dissension in the Pakistan dressing room, and after the tourists had completed the Zimbabwe leg of their visit, Rashid Latif and Basit Ali both quit international cricket.
A climate of corruption, then, existed at this time. Cronje was in Pakistan in late 1994 with the South Africans and he played against Salim in the one-day tournament. He would surely have had the opportunity to meet Salim off the field, with this acquaintance being renewed a few months later when the Pakistanis arrived in South Africa.
In other words, if Symcox is talking about 1995, then there is a circumstantial argument that something might have also been afoot in the South African camp.
The problem with all this, though, is that Symcox played fast and loose with his dates, and none of the lawyers saw fit to pin him down to an exact date.
Symcox referred to 1997, while advocate John Dickerson, appearing for Cronje, talked about 1994.
And so Symcox succeeded mainly in clouding his own revelations.
Peter Robinson is the editor of Cricinfo in South Africa