UCB to open batting against Cronje in court

By Paul Martin Cainer, Johannesburg.

What may have started off like a one-day match is turning out to be something more akin to a timeless Test. The original declaration was that disgraced ex-captain Hansie Cronje would take the United Cricket Board to court, when they banned him for life without giving him a hearing. That threat seemed to have receded when the UCB president Percy Sonn talked of the possibility that Cronje could one day be reinstated, if he showed repentance over time -- a remark he later said was totally hypothetical.

Now, as they say in Yorkshire, let battle commence. Cronje's lawyers have taken out an inderdict (prevention order) to stop the UCB imposing the punishment. I believe the case, laid out by Cronje's lawyers in 100 pages of legalese, will never get to a conclusion.

That's because the much-vaunted King Commission into Cricket Match-Fixing and Related Matters may deliberately be downplaying itself. The conviction is growing here that the real reason for the interminable delays of the King Commission is not the lack of co-operation from the Indian police, but rather a political desire in government to show that cricket corruption is international.

You even get some of that "Poor Old Hansie" clap-trap in high government circles. Gone are the days of the swinging anti-Cronje jokes - like "Who would you call to help you if your electric lights fail and you've got nothing to light even a cigarette with?

Hansie Cronje, 'cos he knows how to fix matches. The public now seems to be ready to forgive. In a recent newspaper double-page spread describing the readers' preferences for "the 50 people you would like to invite to your dinner party", who appeared in the very first column of preferred guests?

Yup, the same man who wanted to throw cricket-matches for money. Talk of supping with the devil...However, the pressure on the authorities to reconsider the light sentence on Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams (six month bans, ending next month) has increased slightly, now that the Indian authorities have been far stricter.

Where -- and when -- will it all end?

Mail Cricket Editor