Revealed: the Cronje fortune [Report] The original article by Neil Manthorp that appeared in the Sunday Telegraph on July 23

Connoisseurs of irony might like to reflect on the possibility that the first person to face prosecution in South Africa for the match- fixing scandal could be a journalist who, by almost any estimation, could be said to have acted in the public interest. If Leslie Sackstein, Hansie Cronje's lawyer, goes ahead with a threat to lay charges under the Commissions Act against Neil Manthorp, the Cape Town-based journalist who authored the Sunday Telegraph article that prompted this week's press conference in Bloemfontein, then the abyss into which South African cricket stumbled 15 months ago will grow ever deeper.

Quite why Cronje and Sackstein are so intent on going after Manthorp has become a sub-plot of its own as this particular tragedy continues to play itself out. Cronje said this week that what he believes to be a "campaign" waged against him by the journalist had its origins in a row between the two in Australia.

There is a little more irony here. The spat concerned an article in the Cape Times that appeared during the third Test in Adelaide in 1998. The piece, which went under an "Own Correspondent" byline, suggested the South Africans had choked during the three legs of the World Series Cup finals played a few days previously. The South Africans were angered by the accusation and believed Manthorp to have authored it.

The fact is that I had written the original story which had been much rewritten in Cape Town where the offensive "choking" sections had been added. Together with Manthorp, I approached the then coach, Bob Woolmer, and pointed this out to him. Whether Woolmer relayed this information to the team is not known, but at the end of the Test, after South Africa had drawn the match, lost the series and Cronje had stuck a stump through the umpires' door, Manthorp and the captain were involved in an ugly exchange after the post-match press conference.

Fast forward three-and-a-half years and Manthorp and Cronje are at it again, and again Manthorp is almost certainly more sinned against than sinning. He acquired a copy of the forensic audit report commissioned, but never completed, by the King commission and published details from it last Sunday.

It can be, and has been, argued that publication of an incomplete report was unfair to Cronje because of the number of questions it raised. This is true, but the fact is that the request for the forensic audit had been well publicised, it formed part of a public inquiry into match-fixing and corruption in cricket and, especially in view of the messy and inconclusive ending of the King commission, it was a legitimate question to ask what had become of the audit.

Manthorp supplied some part of the answer in the Sunday Telegraph. The fact that Cronje's bank accounts became "secret" and his dealings "undisclosed" was the fault of those South African newspapers which proved incapable of handling a straightforward story with due care.

Both Cronje and Sackstein acknowledged on Tuesday that they had not read the original Sunday Telegraph story, but rather the versions that had appeared in papers such as The Star and the Eastern Province Herald. They might have been just as angry had they read the original, but their wrath might have been directed elsewhere.

The fact is that the Cronje saga has not yet run its course. The responsibility for this lies somewhere between Cronje and his lawyers, the United Cricket Board and those who lacked the will to see the King commission through to an understandable conclusion.

Sackstein scoffs at the idea that his threat to challenge Justice Edwin King on constitutional grounds was the main reason for the closure of the commission. He may be right. At the same time, it was curious that the South African government chose to let its own inquiry subside so meekly. It surely would have been in the government's own best interests to establish its right to appoint commissions of inquiry.

Whatever the case, the UCB's handling of the affair this year has also suggested ambivalence and a lack of confidence in its own life ban. Cronje has been able to suggest that the ban prevents him from even a peripheral role in the game, such as coaching underprivileged, and otherwise uncoached, children or in a private capacity working as a newspaper columnist or a television expert.

This is nonsense. If Cronje was to be employed as an in-studio cricket expert on television, there is nothing the UCB could to sanction either the man or the channel that employs him. If he chose to open a private coaching clinic for the young cricketers of the southern Cape, there is not a thing the UCB could do to stop him. The UCB knows this, but for reasons not at all apparent have chosen not to publicise it.

Which has led to much sympathy for Cronje as he prepares to challenge his ban in court in September. Some of the sympathy is misplaced. He is not in financial difficulty, despite his legal fees, and would be hard pressed to argue this while he continues to live, bond free, in a R3,7-million home.

To worsen the UCB's position, as it attempts to convince the South African public and international cricket that the game in this country is not rotten to the core, even Cronje's former team-mates have begun to rally around him.

In a statement this week that was either staggeringly disingenuous, alarmingly stupid or simply bereft of any sense of morality, Jacques Kallis, speaking on behalf of his national team-mates, or so he said, claimed the South African side would welcome Cronje back with open arms and suggested the authorities stop harassing him.

It is difficult to know what to say to this. Is Kallis really so lacking in any sense of sportsmanship, of the traditions of the game from which he earns a very comfortable living and of right and wrong? On a South African station this week the former Ireland and British Lions scrum half and now chat show host John Robbie summed up the confusion which surrounds Cronje when he said that he wanted to hug him and hit him. Robbie also made a telling point when he said that if Cronje was so angry at the "blatant lies" told about him, he should also understand how the country felt about him when he lied to the country.

It is possible to hope that Cronje does not face prosecution (his on-off indemnity deal appears to be on again for the time being) and goes ahead and does some coaching down in the southern Cape. It is also possible to believe that by not accepting his punishment, Cronje continues to damage the game he claims to love so much. South Africa cannot afford to have Cronje back in any official capacity. The rest of the world would not accept it. And if it did, the game would not be worth having anyway.

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