Some neat batting by Cronje

Paul Martin Cainer, in Johannesburg

Opportunism. There's plenty of it around this month. First there's been the breath-taking move by ex-captain Hansie Cronje to proffer his advice on how young cricketers should learn to behave exactly as he did NOT. His words of wisdom were delivered, says his lawyer, to the gentlemen sent to South Africa and India in recent days to investigate corruption in cricket. Naturally, we are told, they turned to the undoubted master of such practices to gain a little insight.

Of course the lawyer for Cronje, Leslie Sackstein, may have been putting a rather positive gloss on the investigators' visit to his Bloemfontein offices. Perhaps the investigators actually felt courageous enough to --- investigate. But then, no, coming from the International Cricket Council with its fine tradition of toothlessness, perhaps they did indeed have a cup of tea and lap up Cronje's counsel to avoid youthful waywardness.

To put it another way, what the hell were they doing? Did they wring out some more damning evidence from Cronje? This wily man seems to have let no chance slip: from accepting a job to lecture on business ethics; to wangling a meeting and a few friendly words from world moral icon Nelson Mandela; to advising the anti-corruption squad from the ICC. Very neat batting, old chap.

But Cronje, who's admitted an addiction to acquiring money, and was well paid for his sycophantic TV interviews, must be a little peeved at missing one trick: he has not yet published his own book -- though negotiations through celebrity publicist Max Clifford are understood to have reached an advanced stage. Cronje has been upstaged, as it were, by another piece of opportunism: a book about him being published. That's where the second bit of opportunism comes in.

The book is by a businessman who had such a "passion" for the game that he took two months' leave to comb through all the Commission transcripts and press-cuttings and to do some interviews. One motivation for his book on the Cronje case, he says, is that his mother loves (used to love?) "dear old Hansie". His book is interesting, I believe, but hardly revealing.

One nice touch is that he's spoken to Cronje's spiritual mentor Ray McCauley, formerly a frequent visitor to South African cricket's inner sanctum, the dressing-room. Apparently, the fiery preacher says he was deeply disappointed that his protégé lied to him (of all people) in his first "confession". He also believes that Cronje has told the truth, but that he has not yet been asked all the relevant questions. Mmmm.

Pity the ICC investigators didn't meet Mr McCauley first, to find out what those questions are, before they had tea with 'dear old Hansie'. But then one mustn't be too nosy, must one? One doesn't know where it might lead.

The betting scandal: The full story

Mail Cricket Editor