Unanswered questions

How to write an obituary for Hansie Cronje? For compassionate South African obituary writers, it must have been a particularly challenging task, for the cricket life of Cronje was split into two very divergent phases.

By dying at the age of 32, Cronje was denied an opportunity to either redeem himself in some small fashion for his disservices to cricket or suffer from further revelations about his involvement in corruption. Thus, Cronje will be remembered in the collective cricket memory for ultimately what remained his distinguishing feature: becoming the first confessed event-fixer and corruptee.

Reading some of the South African press, however, one could be forgiven for thinking Cronje was more a victim of match-fixing rather than a purveyor of it. The Sunday Independent , in a piece mainly dealing with Cronje's cricket career, euphemistically summed up: "Ultimately though, it was events on the Asian subcontinent for which Cronje will be remembered. Unfortunately they were not events which occurred on the field." Not, one suspects, how the world may have treated the untimely death of, say, Salim Malik had Cronje's misdeeds never come to light.

While extending the deepest sympathy to his family and friends for the loss of life at a premature age, as a cricket figure Cronje deserves no sympathy or forgiveness because he has died tragically. His record stands. And on that record, his most significant contribution to cricket was not as a player, captain or role model, as might arguably be the case in South Africa, but as an avaricious cheat who betrayed the game. Cronje was a corruptor and a corruptee, far from the only or possibly the worst one to be sure, but a cheat nonetheless. Cricket is poorer for having known him.

Paradoxically, cricket is also better served for what Cronje's confessions brought to light. As the only player to have confessed to event-fixing and corruption, Cronje brought "match-fixing", the enduring misnomer, under the spotlight in a way that would not quite have been possible with continued denials, however lame (see Salim Malik). His public pain graphically rammed home the turmoil that cricket's greatest threat brought to those who were caught.

Apparently, just a few years ago many players did not understand it might be construed as improper to accept money from bookies to provide information and for some maybe influence events within a match. Now they do, in a way that wouldn't have been as effectively demonstrated without Cronje's confession.

One suspects the real story of match-fixing is yet to be written. The life and death of Hansie Cronje is but one chapter, albeit the most high-profile one to date. Nobody has yet delved into the psyche and circumstances of cricket and cricketers that for some can make accepting bribes and corrupting team-mates a natural act, almost an evolutionary step - and have it accepted by colleagues if not as being normal, then as something not truly shocking.

They say crimes are really committed in the mind long before the act actually takes place; a certain conditioning first needs to occur to make it a viable option. What state of mind developed in Cronje and others over the course of their lives and careers to make match-fixing an acceptable indulgence? How much did cricket, sporting ethics and personal pride really mean to them?

Alas, these types of questions were never asked, as honest answers would have been too difficult to find. If it was so readily possible for Cronje, Malik, Azharuddin and other known corruptees to be tempted then it probably was for others, too. Not enough have been willing to enunciate what the difference was between Cronje and them, which remains worrying. Instead, one senses even most of those prepared to fully face the implications of Cronje's fall look upon him vaguely as a victim of circumstance, with a spirit of "oh well, we thought he was a good bloke, who would have known?" which suggests the line between corruption and integrity is alarmingly slim.

This still bothers me a great deal, for eliminating the presence of bookmakers and spelling out punishments is an important but still essentially superficial reaction to the scourge of match-fixing. It does not address how certain players could possibly come to feel that selling out their team is a realistic option under the right circumstances.

There is a gulf of information in this area. Can it really be that no-one took match-fixing seriously, that it was viewed as a sort of joke that only concerned the subcontinent? What else don't we know? The real betrayal is the heretical thought that there was some sort of sub-culture in place, one tacitly accepted, which made cricket not the sport we thought it was.

Where there is demand, there will be supply. Tighter security around players is a way of restricting that supply, the temptation to under-perform for money, but it does nothing to cure the demand, i.e. the development of a mentality that could make match-fixing seem a palatable proposition.

Simply, most of us aren't motivated not to break the law or do harm to others because of the consequences, we don't do it because it is wrong. So what influences and type of environment made match-fixing look right to Cronje?

In hindsight, we can see there were cracks in the Cronje facade, curious incidents that at the time did not necessarily fit the perception. One recalls Cronje spearing a stump through the umpires' door in Adelaide following a close draw with Australia in 1998, a ball-tampering incident during the ODIs that same season when Cronje stepped on the ball with his spikes, and the strange case of using an earpiece while on the field at the 1999 World Cup. Not really the acts of a rational, upstanding captain, we could say now, though it could all be completely irrelevant.

The mistake probably lies in thinking cricket and cricketers are separate from society at large, when they are not. As there will be corruption and criminals in society, no matter where you are from, so there will be venality and corruption among cricketers.

That still doesn't sufficiently explain how match-fixing was really possible, though, and Cronje's death likely marks the end of the possibility of some light being shed on the issue from his personal history of darkness.

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