Hansie Cronje: Ten Years On

Currently available as a podcast on the BBC website and on iTunes is 5 Live's recent documentary about Hansie Cronje, broadcast to commemorate ten years since his death. It is a timely moment to revisit the Cronje story, after a winter which saw three Pakistani cricketers convicted of spot fixing in a 2010 test match, Essex's Mervyn Westfield convicted of a similar offence in a county match, and the announcement of a new ECB initiative to tackle the threat of match fixing in the English game.

The most striking item in the programme was how little we still know about what went on in that period. Journalist Neil Manthorp mentions a series of bank accounts that were allegedly linked to many prominent cricketing figures, yet the investigation into those accounts was shut down after Cronje's death. These accounts had been previously mentioned in a television documentary, 'The Captain and The Bookmaker', made by political journalist Peter Oborne. This film was also critical of the report by the King Commission, which had investigated Cronje's crimes in the immediate aftermath, accusing it of being insubstantial.

Both programmes interview Marlon Aronstam, the bookmaker behind the infamous 'leather jacket test match' between South Africa and England in 2000. One thing that Oborne's documentary gets out of him is the suggestion of an ongoing relationship between Cronje and the bookie after that test match, but no details are forthcoming, nor is this elaborated on in the 5 Live documentary.

Aronstam's testimony is clearly difficult to trust, but what is alarming is the notion that the authorities only scratched the surface. Will this investigation ever be resurrected? The suggestion that dozens of other major cricketers were involved in match fixing but got away with it, would undermine an entire decade's worth of international matches. Perhaps most worrying for the game in the future is the thought that whatever bookmakers or gamblers were involved in these accounts were never identified publicly, leaving them free to continue their efforts.

This is, of course, pure speculation, based on an investigation that was terminated. But unless it is proven that those mysterious bank accounts are a myth, or were unrelated to match fixing, the doubt will always linger. That is perhaps Cronje's greatest crime against cricket: creating a nagging suspicion, that seems unlikely to be lifted any time soon.