In death, as in the last two years of his life, there was no rest for Hansie Cronje this week. A row broke out over who should and who shouldn’t attend his funeral on Wednesday and it was left to his widow Bertha to bring some dignity to the squabble when she said that all those who wished to pay their respects were welcome.
In the two years since the match-fixing scandal broke it has been well-nigh impossible to take a balanced view of Cronje, the man, the cricketer and the captain who betrayed a trust. To many, if not most, he was either a complete hero or a total rogue. Each view is simplistic, but with Cronje you found yourself, against your will, drawn into one camp or another. If you weren’t with him, you were against him. If you had sympathy for his plight, it was tantamount to condoning corruption.
Perhaps Cronje himself contributed to these extremes, if unwittingly, when he alluded to Satan’s part in his downfall. There are more than enough people around happy to blame the devil for the bad stuff while taking credit for the good things. The notion of personal responsibility doesn’t come into it.
As a cricketer Cronje was a good international batsman who fell short of being a great. He wasn’t a Brian Lara or a Sachin Tendulkar nor, in terms of application, was he an Atherton or a Steve Waugh. He was vulnerable against stuff that came up into his rib cage, but he sought to dominate spin, taking on the slow bowlers and trying to dominate them, frequently to very good effect. He hit the biggest six I have seen off Shane Warne, on to the roof of the Bill O’Reilly Stand in Sydney.
He was also a better bowler than he sometimes gave himself credit for, being especially effective on the sub-continent, but it was as the South African captain that Cronje made his impact on the game.
There is no question that he was a powerful leader, making his points through force of personality. He gradually accrued more power than any other captain in the modern game, and that includes a succession of strong Australian leaders. But he was by no means infallible. When South Africa lost the fifth Test and the series to England at Headingley in 1998, it was never satisfactorily explained why he did not exercise his captain’s right of claiming the extra half-hour on the fourth evening.
With South Africa needing 34 to win with two wickets standing and Shaun Pollock and Allan Donald batting, it seemed imperative to keep England in the field. Darren Gough had bowled himself to his knees and Angus Fraser was off the field with back spasms. Yet the players came off and a refreshed England won by 23 runs the next morning.
He also led South Africa during two unsuccessful World Cup campaigns and any estimation of his triumphs has to be set alongside the failures.
In another respect, Cronje became so powerful that he became almost unchallenged in his influence over the team. When he departed, he left a vacuum that was never satisfactorily filled. In a sense, coach Graham Ford was sacked last weekend for not doing a job he wasn’t hired to do. Cronje took care of discipline while he was there.
And he abused this power, conveying bribes to his teammates to throw games or to underperform. The most surprising thing about this is that Cronje was, literally, a student of the game and its traditions. He, more than any of his teammates, understood the simple black and white of the rights and wrongs of cricket.
No one really knows why he succumbed to temptation and it is possible now that no one will. But there was another side to him off the field, even if this sometimes expressed itself in extreme ways. When he was up, you could see it, when he was down, it often seemed more prudent to keep out of his way. He had a mischievous sense of humour and he sometimes bore grudges. He was, in many respects, completely normal.
One memory sticks out, though. At the 1999 World Cup I asked him to sign an autograph for a young boy whose family had been decimated shortly before the tournament. He took my pen and filled two sides of an A4 sheet of paper with sympathy and encouragement and advice. It was far more than I requested and it helped the young boy through a terrible period in his life.
In time we may come to see Cronje, his flaws and his achievements, more clearly. Perhaps the Cronje family and the United Cricket Board might, some day, consider a Hansie Cronje Scholarship that would be used to put a deserving youngster through university. Until then, Cronje is neither a hero nor a villain, but an enigma.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa