Cover Story: Cricket, Outlaw

Breaking through the winter cloud which covered Table Mountain like a heavy blanket, the morning sun came streaming through the skyroof over the heads of more than 200 still, silent people. Justice Edwin King looked over at Hansie Cronje, and quoted the Bible. "Mr Cronje," King said to the big man suddenly hunched small in his chair, "the truth shall set you free."

INTERVIEW: M.AZHARUDDIN
"It is a counter-attack by SA

The former Indian captain spoke to associate editor V. Shankar Aiyar:
ťHansie Cronje has charged that you introduced him to a bookie, Mukesh Gupta.
A. I completely deny these allegations. I treat them with all the contempt they deserve. I am innocent and ready to face any investigation.
ťThen why did he name you?
A. This is Cronje's retaliation against the Indian Government's permission to Delhi Police to expose him. This has been done after careful thought by the South African cricket authorities. Anyway, how can anyone rely on the statement of a person who contradicts himself every day? ťBut why you?
A. Maybe because I am from a minority community. I feel some people are ganging up against me. They know I have played with all sincerity and they don't want me to play for India.
ťWhy does your name keep cropping up?
A. This is totally unfair. All my achievements are the result of my hard work. Perhaps some people are unhappy that I staged a comeback.
ťWhat is this VDIS story?
A. That is all rubbish. I have already taken legal action against Vishwa Bandhu Gupta. Being a government official, he should get his facts right and act responsibly.
ťHave you been summoned by the CBI?
A. No. All this talk about me having been called is fabricated. I find myself being quoted by channels and dotcoms which I have not even spoken to. The Press has to be responsible. They are creating a lot of trouble for everybody. I and my lawyers are contemplating action against false allegations in the media.

The truth, according to Cronje, now paints him as an innocent being lured further and further into a world of easy money in the subcontinent, where he said the "level of temptation placed in front of a cricketer" cannot be exaggerated. Apart from the moral posturing, what Cronje did do was establish yet another link between the much accused former India captain Mohammed Azharuddin and the forces of illegal betting.

Naming names for the first time, Cronje was hardly surprising, but surprisingly specific. During a Test in Kanpur in 1996, Azharuddin introduced him to one Mukesh Gupta and left the room. For a first-time acquaintance, Gupta got straight to the point, offering Cronje money to lose the Test and following that with an offer to throw the now infamous Mohinder Amarnath benefit match.

Barring that one mention, Azharuddin plays no further role in Cronje's testimony. But his friend Gupta followed the South Africans on the tour. He also turned up in South Africa during the middle of the southern summer, offering cash for information. Cronje's statement about Azharuddin is deliberately open-ended -- he establishes the link but doesn't quite indict the Indian.

The BCCI, of course, would rather nothing happened at all. It believes its little patch of territory is the Garden of Eden where match-fixing does not exist and none of the apples are rotten. The bookies may come from India, the money may come from India, even the punters may mostly come from India. But the crooks are imported. Predictably, BCCI boss A.C. Muthiah took cover under the CBI investigation, saying, "I've no doubt they will get to the bottom of the matter." ICC chief Jagmohan Dalmiya didn't think a suspension would be fair either on the basis of "somebody's allegation", leaving it to Union Sports Minister S.S. Dhindsa to say he thought Azhar should quit the team till he is cleared. A betting man would tell you the odds on any action being taken are slim.

The CHAWLA TAPES

Bookie's Contacts in the Indian Team

Ever since the Hansie Cronje tapes became public knowledge and cricket's nightmare began, Delhi Police has been consistent in its claim that names of no Indian cricketers have emerged. The conversations between Cronje and bookies Rajesh Kalra and Sanjeev Chawla, the men in khaki have maintained, make no mention of Indian players.
This may be a somewhat less than accurate statement. As information made available to INDIA TODAY makes it clear, the Chawla-Cronje conversations indicate the fixing syndicate was in touch with Indian cricketers or perhaps administrators. As a government official says, "They were certainly in touch with somebody who was in the know of team selection because they seemed to know who would be playing." For a domestic series, those who would probably be privy to selection would be the captain, the team coach and the five national selectors.
The damaging transcript belongs to the evening of March 16, when Chawla called Cronje in his hotel room in Vadodara. The following day India and South Africa were to play the fourth match of the series in the city. The "script" for the game was discussed in some detail. It was agreed that if India batted first it would score no less than 300 and if South Africa batted first it would score no more than 250.
While going through the plan, Cronje at one point told Chawla that modulating his team's batting performance depended a lot on the opposition bowling. He reportedly asked Chawla if three Indian bowlers in particular would be playing -- spinners Sunil Joshi and Nikhil Chopra and paceman Javagal Srinath. Chawla promised to find out and hung up.
A short while later, Chawla called back and told Cronje that his sources in the Indian camp had assured him Srinath and Joshi would be playing while Chopra would not. This is exactly as it turned out.
The match itself took a course quite different from the one plotted the previous evening. Apparently, police sources say, some members of the South African team got wind of Cronje's conspiracy and decided to sabotage it by making an honest effort. Opener Gary Kirsten set the pace with 72 as the visitors reached 282. Joshi (10 overs for 69) and Srinath (nine overs for 60) proved the most expensive of the Indian attack. The fast bowler, in fact, was smashed for 43 in his first spell of five overs.
In reply India raced to 100 without loss in the 15th over. Saurav Ganguly (87) and Sachin Tendulkar (122) eventually ran up a partnership of 153 by the 25th over. Inexplicably the Indians made heavy weather of the rest of the job, losing four wickets (Tendulkar, Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja and Joshi) between 256 and 277, the middle two to full tosses.
Finally Robin Singh and Syed Saba Karim took India to victory with one ball to spare -- but not before Lance Klusener dropped a simple catch at mid-on and then missed a run out chance. So ended a match that both teams seemed to have tried very hard to lose.

Cronje however did not stop at naming Gupta, adding three more bookies to cricket's Most Wanted list -- "Sunil", the famous "Mr John" and one "Marlin Aronstam". Like the protagonists of the Kurosawa classic Rashomon, what Cronje did was attempt to tell his version of the truth in the hope of getting amnesty from criminal prosecution. He went before TV cameras to announce that he had only put his hand in the till. Not robbed the bank. Nobody buys that anymore. Outside the courthouse a man approached a lawyer to ask, "Can I sue these guys for the trauma and heartache they have caused me?"

Rumours swirled about Cape Town the day before that the traumatised Cronje was going to blow the whole boat out of the water. "I know what he is doing," muttered an advocate once Cronje finished, "He's said exactly what Ali Bacher has said, just added his name to the same ideas, named much the same people, like Salim Malik who can't play anymore, and added on all that bit about educating and protecting young players."

It is hardly surprising Cronje took this stance: during his career he was the poster boy of the United Cricket Board (UCB). Even now in the deepest public disgrace possible, Cronje had succeeded in becoming a symbol: the Christian cricketer who had by his confessions saved world cricket. Bacher, a master of spin, was not present during Cronje's deposition, but he would have approved.

The two go back a very long way. Nine years ago, Bacher sat triumphant in a hotel room in Dubai talking to an Indian journalist about his dreams for South African cricket. Organiser of the notorious rebel tours of the 1980s, fund-manager of apartheid's "blood money", Bacher had just successfully shepherded South Africa's readmission into international cricket. He talked of the newly formed UCB of South Africa and its development programme and the resurgence of pride in South African cricket. He talked of a black man, Walter Masomolo from Soweto, who was being fast-tracked through to the system to become the first black fast bowler for South Africa and a white man called Jonty Rhodes who had mercury in his veins and defied gravity. And finally he talked about a rising Afrikaaner star, who at 21 was the leader of his provincial side, a young man with a cricketing mind so sharp it could cut through glass. "They are already talking about him as a future captain of South Africa. He is called Hansie Cronje. Remember the name."

If match-fixing were not such a smelling, swelling mess this could be international cricket's great Greek tragedy. The saga of a mentor and the man he made, who had it all before he threw it all away in many moments of weakness. Except that in this particular immorality play, the man, his mentor and their whole tribe, have season after season perpetuated a fraud upon their sport and their audience.

As a result, nothing quite as dignified as drama has taken place in Cape Town. In a circular room panelled with wooden shelves and storybooks for children, under a high-domed ceiling, a can of worms has been slowly prised open and the world has come to watch. A standing-room-only crowd plays hushed audience in the central reading room of the Centre for the Book as retired judge Edwin "Sharkie" King puts cricket in the witness box. His interim report will be released only by the end of June but the verdict is already out: cricket as a whole is guilty.

The testimonies of South Africa's God Squad, "singing" virtually in chorus about offers made, monies bargained for and a code of silence matching the Omerta in its potency, may have nailed the lid shut on the coffin that is Cronje's cricket career. Yet, it is the subtext of the testimony of officials which is an indication that accountability for Hansiegate is being sought from a very small bunch of men and punishment targeted at the puppets, not the puppet-masters.

Bacher had earlier sat in the witness chair for close to five hours and his testimony had everything -- a little diplomacy, a litle searing self-examination and earnest concern. Everything except an explanation as to why he and other officials kept turning away from repeated tip offs about match-fixing as long as five seasons ago.

In their cross examination of Bacher, government prosecutors tried to establish exactly this:

Firstly, Bacher had links with an Indian bookie, who gave him more than a clue about match-fixing as early as 1994-95 and then again between 1996 and 1998. Bacher took it no further, and continued his own acquaintance with the man.

Secondly, the ICC discussed the Shane Warne-Mark Waugh episode of 1994 as late as February 1999. According to Bacher's testimony, no member country in the ICC even objected to the decision by ICC president Sir Clyde Walcott and CEO David Richards to keep the matter from other cricket administrators. Bacher's defence of his lapse in accountability: "There's a viewpoint in the ICC that it should have been brought to the attention of all the administrators at that time."

Thirdly, former coach Bob Woolmer said that on his return from India in 1996, he had mentioned the offer to throw the Mohinder Amarnath benefit match to Bacher. Bacher says he can't recall Woolmer mentioning this though he admits to having a "10-second" conversation with Cronje about the match much before his involvement in match-fixing became known in April this year.

Bacher was asked "in view of the fact that what was going on in the cricket world ... didn't you think it was something important that you needed to find out more about?" His reply: "In hindsight, you're absolutely right." Had Woolmer told him about it, Bacher said "it would have been automatic to have informed the board about it, to have an inquiry, to inform the ICC about it and also bring it to the attention of the Indian cricket authorities". None of which he did in all the years that Mr R and he dined together discussing the match-fixing mafia running the game.

Former Pakistan Cricket Board chief Majid Khan told Bacher in June 1999 that two World Cup games had been fixed. Again Bacher kept his silence.

If it looks like cricket has strange head priests, it keeps pretty terrible company too. Not just Hansie Cronje and Sanjay Chawla or the alphabet soup of shadowy figures -- Pat Symcox's Mr X or Bacher's Mr R.

In April, an official of the Mumbai Cricket Association confirmed that in early 1993 a "well wisher" presented the Indian team with Rs 25 lakh in cash in Wankhede Stadium for sweeping the three-Test series against England. Two months later the well wisher was arrested under TADA.

Probably the most sinister links have been made in the testimonies of Rashid Latif and Basit Ali to the Malik Mohammed Qayuum Commission. Latif and Ali told Qayuum that during the 1995 tour they walked into Salim Malik's room and found him with the biggest bookie in Pakistan, Muhammad Hanif Kodvavi alias Hanif Cadbury.

Cadbury, a key player in betting circles, had moved from Karachi to South Africa. Last year, he was abducted and died a gruesome death. He was shot 67 times and his body was cut into pieces, according to a report in the Sunday Times of London. Oddly enough, the Johannesburg Police deny that this violent crime ever took place.

This inquiry is not about the loss of innocence anymore. It is rather a search for redemption for a troubled sport. The offer of amnesty made by the National Director of Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka is not being considered a compromise, but rather a carrot dangled to the players to avoid the big stick of a prison term. But only "full disclosures", one hears, would move the judge to grant it. A businessman from Johannesburg was unimpressed. "There are thousands of people here who are behind bars for months without trial for stealing to feed their families. Why are these guys so special? Why shouldn't they go to jail?"

In hindsight there is little sympathy for Herschelle Gibbs' defence now -- that he was worried about supporting his recently divorced mother -- because the 26-year-old would have to make do with his annual UCB salary of only 750,000 rands (Rs 50 lakh), on top of which he earns bonuses and endorsements.

Unlike Justice Y.V. Chandrachud, Judge King's Commission is armed with teeth and doesn't mind baring them occasionally. There is a formidable forward line of lawyers including the one man who has taken centrestage. Quiet, seemingly respectful of cricketers, he is like a shark in a bad mood during cross examination. Jeremy Gauntlett's star turn as the UCB counsel comes at a daily fee of close to 15,000 rands (Rs 1 lakh).

One of South Africa's top lawyers, Gauntlett was very active during the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission inquiries and also succeeded in overturning a guilty verdict in a rape charge against fast bowler Makhaya Ntini. Gauntlett makes jokes with the judge and can toy with an inferior intellect on the witness stand as easily as he sits down in his chair.

Daryll Cullinan was left a pathetic figure, Cronje's devout Christian beliefs were dismissed as "theological ventriloquism" and Pat Symcox cut off during a chuckling, rambling monologue with a dry, "answer the question Mr Symcox". Gauntlett first congratulated Gibbs for being "forthright and brave" and 10 minutes later reduced the all-rounder to a nervous wreck having proved that he had lied no less than eight times to the UCB about the approach from Cronje.

The Inquiry Commission's own team is far less flashy. Shamila Batohi, deputy director of public prosecutions of the province, has with her Vincent Bottle from the Investigating Directorate (Serious Economic Offences), Directorate of Public Prosecutions and two senior police officers -- Geoff Edwards and Grahan Dawes -- who are attached to the Investigating Directorate (Organised Crime).

Batohi, an energetic and humorous young woman who has taken apart witnesses' testimonies in court with the precision of a surgeon says, "I've dealt with a lot worse as an prosecutor. But I can only say that it has been extremely uncomfortable for the players and embarrassing to be caught out in front of all those people and the cameras."

The inquiry has focused attention in its first 10 days entirely on these players culminating in Cronje's dramatic televised statement. The role of administrators is not yet under such severe scrutiny though there are rumblings within the Government that there is a desire to expose the involvement of those at the very top of cricket.

The Centre for the Book, the building where the King Commission inquiry rolls on with pomp and purpose, was set up in Cape Town with the aim of building a "nation of readers" starting with children. The worthies in the thick of the match-fixing controversy, whether well-paid cricketers or powerful cricket officials, may not give kidstuff even a passing glance, but a line from the current rage in children's fiction, the Harry Potter series, issues swift definitive judgement on them. The boy wizard Harry Potter is told by a wise old head, "It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

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	June 26, 2000