Public sightings of Hansie Cronje have been few and far between since the King commission of inquiry into match-fixing closed down its public hearings last June. In the past week, however, the former South African captain has been on the road, taking the first steps, some suspect, towards a broader rehabilitation.

In Durban and in Johannesburg over the past few days Cronje has been the guest speaker at meetings of the Charles Glass Society. For those unacquainted with Mr Glass, he is reputed to be the master brewer who came up with the formula for Castle Lager, one of South Africa's most popular beers and the sponsor of the country's national cricket and rugby teams.

The members of the Charles Glass Society are almost exclusively white, male, middle-class and affluent. In the new South Africa, where political correctness holds sway, they tend to feel themselves an endangered species whose norms and values have been dismissed and disparaged.

They also form, however, the bedrock of support for cricket and rugby, traditionally "white" sports, in South Africa. They are the people who approve sponsorship deals, who pay for hospitality suites and who make up, at a rough guess, around 70% of the crowd for any major cricket or rugby match.

They are, in other words, Cronje's ideal constituency and in Johannesburg the other night they let him know it.

The Charles Glass Society is not a formal marketing arm of South African Breweries, the manufacturers of Castle Lager, but it exists with the full support of SAB. Meetings are held once a month and consist of members drinking Castle Lager, eating hamburgers and listening to a guest speaker who talks off the record. Last month it was former Springbok centre Dick Muir; this month it was Cronje.

It is to break no confidences to reveal that Cronje said nothing that is not already in the public domain. What was more significant was the overwhelming support and sympathy he received.

Usually meetings are held in the Wanderers rugby clubhouse, but the venue was changed for Cronje because, it was claimed, the terms of his ban prohibit him from entering the clubhouse which is sited within the precinct of the Wanderers Stadium.

A more prosaic explanation for the shift of venue is simply that the clubhouse would not have held the 400 or so who turned up to listen to Cronje. Among them were former South African cricketers Richard Snell and "Spook" Hanley and rugby Springboks Joel Stransky and Werner Swanepoel. They were all people who would have, at best, been dismayed and disappointed the Hansiegate affair. At worst they would have felt angered and betrayed and supported Cronje's life ban it was announced.

This week, though, they were behind Cronje to a man. In this section of South African society there is a growing belief that Cronje has been harshly treated, that he has been punished for being honest where others have remained silent and that he should still have a role to play in cricket.

To some extent this is the product of the climate of moral ambivalence that prevails in South Africa. Cronje has been banned for life from cricket for admitting his wrongdoing and may yet face criminal charges. The chief government whip, on the other hand, received a luxury car at a massive discount from a company connected with a multi-billion rand arms deal and simply refuses to disclose, either to parliament or the public, the circumstances of his acquisition.

There is also a perception that for all the huff and puff of Sir Paul Condon, the ICC's anti-corruption unit is going nowhere, a perception reinforced by MK Gupta's recent vow of silence. No one in South Africa believes Cronje, together with Mohammad Azharuddin and Salim Malik, to be the only senior cricketers to have been involved in corruption, yet it now seems to be the case that Cronje would have been better off had he simply denied everything instead of confessing his involvement.

Even within the United Cricket Board there is growing sympathy for Cronje – although this is usually expressed in whispers. When former UCB managing director Ali Bacher recently offered the view that there still might be a role in cricket for Cronje, his sentiments were shot down by Percy Sonn, the UCB president.

Sonn, perhaps, is central to Cronje's future. Feisty, abrasive and given to intemperate outbursts every now and again, Sonn has been quoted as saying that Cronje should not even be allowed to play beach cricket. So much for any chance of rehabilitation.

Cronje, meanwhile, still intends to challenge his ban in court in September. Many, both inside and outside the UCB, believe he has a decent chance of having it overturned. Sonn's public utterances, however, suggest no hope of compromise while Cronje's lawyers, in the not inconsiderable shape of Leslie Sackstein, seem determined to take the UCB on head-on.

Whether any or all of this is tied in with Cronje's decision to come out of exile is anyone's guess, but the logjam which followed the revelations of the King commission has started to show signs of breaking up. Cricket and Hansie Cronje have not finished with each other yet. That at least seems certain.

© CricInfo Ltd.