Wessel Johannes Cronje… Yes, very well known as Hansie Cronje... I hope all the die-hard cricket fans and people who watch the game of cricket, surely remember this person. Very well equipped, instrumental, cooler than ice and a clever captain South Africa had during its Golden Era. He and his team taught the world how to play professional cricket. I think South Africa was the first team under Hansie Cronje which brought the term “Professional cricket”. After the famous World Cup Semi-final 1992, South African team was not performing that well. I remember during 1994-95 series, South Africa was losing back-to-back matches despite having bunch of good all-rounder, fast bowlers and fine batsmen. Hansie Cronje rose during that period as a good batsman and an effective clever medium pacer. His gentle medium-pace bowling with nagging line and a little bit of swing always proved worthy and hard to tackle.After Clive Rice and ageing Andrew Kirsten, South Africa desperately needed a leader who could convert the good talent into performance. Hansie was the best choice. In World Cup of 1996, South Africa was flooded with rich talent under Cronje’s captainship. They won all the group matches with fluent performance before the ailing West Indies, who lost to Kenya in league round, jumped back and put their best performance against S. Africa to win the quarter-final. (Bad luck in second consecutive time in WC.) Cronje’s captaincy journey had taken high pace in 1996. His team was winning almost every match and there was no one stopping them. Characteristic of Cronje’s captaincy was that he would extract the best out of his players with innovative field placing, handling the crunch situation to better effect and bringing the brain before mind to take the decisions. When he came with his troops to India in 1995-96 to play on more than batting friendly pitches, he adopted different strategies to tackle with India. He put Fannie Devilliers and Greig Mathews before Donald to bowl to Sachin Tendulkar. Fannie Devilliers fished Sachin three times with slower deliveries.
During that period, the battle between Australia and South Africa was always intriguing. Australia, by nature, was always attacking and believed in crushing the opposition team. And South Africa would act like slow poison on opposition team. Given a choice, any cricket-lover would opt to see the battle between Steve Waugh and Hansie Cronje. Australian team at that period was playing strong cricket and S. African team, too, had matching caliber. Steve Waugh was blessed with legendary bowlers in the likes of Macgrath, Flemming, and Warne. Contrary, Cronje had Champion bowler Donald with fresh and enthusiastic Pollock, Kallis, and Klusener. Steve Waugh would give the ball to any one of his bowlers and the return was as guaranteed as a Post Office Savings Scheme and as high as market returns. Hansie Cronje against Australia required to invest his bowlers according to the condition, to gain higher returns. He did it with good effect. I always liked Cronje than Steve Waugh as a captain. Although he could not win many matches against the champion team Australia, he always gave close fight to them.
All was going well for Hansie before he struck with match-fixing in 2000 series against India. He won the test series in India, but lost the suspicious one-day series. It was April 2000 when Mumbai Police brought the match fixing tape to media, and for the first time it was proved that matches were getting tampered for some handsome money. It was Cronje who got trapped in the net. He didn’t deny the charges and confessed saying, “Yes, I was guilty of match-fixing” despite knowing that his cricketing career would end after this. Perturbed by his acceptance, the cricketing world could not believe that a player like Cronje who was well respected not only by his teammates but also by other cricketers all over the world, would get tempted to such thing. The saga ended on 5th June 2002 when he died in a plane crash.
Only one song summarizes his tragedy...
टुटा टुटा एक परिंदा ऐसे टुटा के फिर जुड़ ना पाया,
लुटा लुटा किसने उसको ऐसे लुटा के फिर उड़ ना पाया...!
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