NEWS
SCHEDULES
COLUMNS
PREVIOUS TOURS
OTHER SPORTS
STATISTICS
INTERVIEWS
SLIDE SHOW
ARCHIVES

Cronje to lift the lid off match-fixing

Hansie Cronje is planning to make major revelations about corrupt cricket practices, when he finally gives evidence to the King Commission.

So says Cronje's religious leader Ray McCauley. The disgraced former captain is, meanwhile, keeping a very low profile.

When I visited Cronje's two-million rand home amid glorious surroundings on the Cape south coast yesterday, the door remained firmly shut. Cronje has been consulting lawyers in Cape Town, though he'll probably be the last of forty-odd witnesses called up by Judge King.

Ray McCauley says that when Cronje does speak, he'll admit it is his voice on the Indian tape-recordings, but he'll say he was just stringing the bookies along. Intriguingly, the preacher says Cronje will lift the lid on what he called "a tremendous amount going on" around the cricketing world.

It is not, however, likely for Cronje to get away quite that easily -- if only because former team-mates seem ready to blow their ex-captain out of the water.

Indications are that a former team-mate will tell the Edwin King commission that Cronje was keen to accept money for losing the ODI between India and South Africa in Bombay on December 14, 1996. Cronje allegedly told this team-mate that he had been offered $250,000 to throw the game, and asked this player to think seriously about the offer.

Then followed three team meetings during which the idea was discussed. And word is that only the opposition of Andrew Hudson and Derek Crookes ensured that the offer was rejected.

If, as expected, the team-mate deposes about the alleged offer, then it will indicate that Cronje's links to match-fixing go much deeper than the one conversation recorded by the Indian police during the South African tour of India earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Judge Edwin King, chairman of the official commission into cricket corruption in South Africa, has lashed out at one of South Africa's national cricket selectors.

Kepler Wessels, selector and former South African captain, says he has heard of efforts from top South Africans to keep revelations of cricket corruption to a minimum. Wessels says "cricket sources as high as they come" have told him there's a desire for as little to come out of Judge King's enquiry as possible.

Wessels also found it "impossible to understand" how the equiry could get underway without access to the Indian police's tape-recordings of cell-phone conversatiosn between a bookie and, allegedly, Hansie Cronje.

Meanwhile, South Africa's largest independent free-to-air television broadcaster, ETV, has warned Judge Edwin King that it will take him to court today, the day officially fixed for start of the hearings. The TV company wants to force him to allow television cameras to film the hearings at Judge King's commission of inquiry into cricket match-fixing and corruption.

In the Centre for the Book, venue of the commission hearings that hangs in the shadow of Table Mountain, there'll be twenty minutes of mayhem as camera operators, radio reporters and press jostle for position. Then the real trouble may start.

As the former Judge-President orders the TV and radio men to take their equipment out, ETV is likely to serve the judge with a writ. Their lawyers claim that by expelling cameras, Judge King will be breaching a right to equal treatment for the media, guaranteed in the Constitution.

If ETV persists and a compromise is not found, the main part of the actual match-fixing inquiry could be delayed for weeks. ETV say the judge is denying one key part of the media the right to show the public what's going on.

Commissions of Enquiry have to be held mainly in public -- but Judge King hotly contests ETV's claim that the public hearings must be open to television. He's also banned live broadcast or even recording for radio -- but the old method, pen and paper, is still permitted.

The Edwin King commission will be assisted by Shamila Batok, a 39-year-old deputy director of public prosecutions. Two policemen from the investigative directorate will form the backup staff.

Lawyer Peter Whelan will be representing most of the players who are due to be summoned as witnesses. Cronje however will have an entire legal team, led by Clem Drucker, lawyer and former cricket administrator.

Paul Martin Cainer is Editor, Sport Africa and Live Africa, and will be reporting on the King Commission hearings for Rediff.com