NB: Long post!
I absolutely love cricket and was deeply interested to watch a new season on BBC4 entitled Not Cricket. The first episode was about the Hansie Cronje match-fixing affair, which you can watch here for free on BBC iPlayer (but hurry, it will go offline in a few days!).
Background: Hansie Cronje – “icon” of white South African cricket. White people in SA thought he was the dog’s bollocks basically. His fall from grace came when he admitted to taking money to take part in match-fixing. And the house of cards all came tumbling down after this.
The position of race in the Cronje era: According to the documentary, post 1994, South Africa was now integrated back into the international cricket world after the 20 year boycott. People thought it was necessary to have several black players in the South African team. Then in some footage in the doc, Cronje was seen as saying he thought selection should be “fair” and not based on people just being there. Um, was apartheid FAIR ? Is this man on drugs ? He was basically saying there should not be a quota of black people in the South African side. As a result of this bollocks, 2 black/”cape coloured”* players have consistently been in the South African side on and off: Makhaya Ntini(right) and Herschelle Gibbs, of Cape Coloured origin(left), both of whom have had very controversial careers anyway.
Gibbs (left) was implicated in the Cronje affair apparently because “Cronje had offered him $15,000 to score less than 20 runs in the 5th ODI at Nagpur”. The documentary alleges that Cronje basically took the piss by trying to recruit Gibbs as he was a young, black/”coloured” player making inroads in the SA squad and Gibbs looked up to Cronje, so Cronje took advantage of this young ethnic boy basically and shat all over him. To date, Gibbs career has survived but…just. He was banned from international cricket for 6 months. Henry Williams, the other black player who Cronje offered money to, according to the docu, basically did not play Test Cricket again.
Implications: The docu was focused on cricket more than race but I think that the implication of the Cronje match fixing scandal is evident. Match-fixing is NOT a joke. It is very serious. But what I think is equally serious is how the SA press and the Afrikaners lauded Cronje as this magnificent image of the New South Africa where he basically took the piss out of the black players by involving them in the scandal and by not advocating a positive discrimination policy. Considering SA’s fucking awful apartheid history, positive discrimination should have been put forward. Without a shadow of a doubt.
I concur wholly with Peter Oborne, who according to the Indy said:
Yule and the writer-narrator, Peter Oborne, believe that Cronje’s behaviour was the more insidious because he involved the non-white players whose places in the team were less secure. “There is a marked pattern. The corruption became greater, if it did not begin, after non-white players became a more regular part of the team,” said Yule. (source)
Cronje took the fucking piss basically. He knew that because he was white, his place was secure. Gibbs and Williams are not white, therefore they were taken advantage of. People have to be on K if they think that racism would just evaporate after Mandela took power in 1994.
The Image: According to the Indy, Cronje was under the pressure to ensure that black players were mixed in the team. Yet:
Yule said: “In 1999, almost eight years after South Africa had begun playing international cricket again, they could still face West Indies in a Test match with a team consisting entirely of white players.
I just find this ludicrous. 1999!!!! As recent as that. And playing the West Indies out of all nations, a conglomerate of islands that actually has black and Indian people like Sarwan, Lara etc. It is almost unbelievable.
I urge anyone with a net connection and an hour to spare to watch this documentary. It highlights a great deal of the Afrikaner cricket mindset.
Epilogue: Cronje died in a plane crash in 2002. He was banned from cricket for life after the match fixing scandal.
Links
4 more days? Ok, I’ll try to watch the documentary before it expires.
No, I don’t have a blog. I don’t think I could be committed enough to post several times a week. I do however frequent other blogs in the Black blogosphere with much excitement. I particularly love your blog because you post topics with sincere insightfulness.
@rawdawgbuffalo, in sa, did they see cronje as some sort of god ? cos that is what the documentary was implying.
@marco, i am sure you will find the documentary very engaging. it is only available online for 4 more days. i embedded the link in the post anyway
. it is a very fascinating topic and yet deeply disturbing. plus there is this one line that a commentator says about the head of South African cricket, Ali Bacher. He basically had to do some major PR to diffuse the situation and the commentator said that at the press conference, “he looked as if he was on tranquilisers”. i think that is just hilarious for some reason. marco, do you have a blog ?
Being in the United State I’m completely ignorant to cricket in general and this affair in particular. I love sports, so when I get a chance I’ll give that documentary a look.
Looks like a f*cked up situation.
when i was in s.africa, it was on tv almost every day