How does a batsman who sports a one-day average of more than 40 at a strike-rate of nearly 90 fail to score a single boundary in a 21-ball 14 when his team needs the runs most?

That was the question on every spectator's lips when Lance Klusener failed to score the runs needed to take South Africa to a win against India in the semi-final of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Champions Trophy 2002. The answers were as varied as they were imaginative. The result, however, has been singular; Klusener was dropped from the South African one-day side two-thirds of the way through a home series against Bangladesh immediately after the Champions Trophy.

Soon after that semi-final loss, the Galadari hotel in Colombo was abuzz with the Chinese whispers that, post-Hansiegate, typically do the rounds after a side loses from a winning position. At 192 for one in the 37th over, South Africa were coasting to victory, needing just 70 runs from 13 overs with nine wickets to spare. And yet this side, rated as second only to Australia in world cricket, somehow fell short by 10 runs with four wickets to spare, losing their sixth wicket with the final ball of the innings.

Jacques Kallis, one of the finest all-rounders in world cricket today, was at the crease for long, batting as well as he has in recent times. On the slow, tracks of the Premadasa Stadium, it was imperative for a well-set batsman to attach himself to his wicket like a limpet. Time and time again, when a new batsman arrived at the crease, scoring quickly became next to impossible, and more wickets fell. The South Africans analyse cricket more closely than anyone else in the business, and they would have been acutely aware of this fact.

Yet somehow, Kallis did not attempt to accelerate the scoring rate till the very last over -­ when 21 runs were needed off 6 balls. Too little, too late. Then again, the theory that Kallis fails to take control of games more often than not and ends up with a grand fifty in a losing cause is not new, however much fans of the all-rounder may disagree.

The case of Klusener is even more intriguing. As soon as he hit the last ball, straight up in the air for Mohammad Kaif to catch, non-striker Shaun Pollock sprinted off the field. No stopping for a polite handshake with the winning captain, no word of thanks for the umpires, no consolatory pat on the back for the colleague. Those sitting in the press box at the Premadasa Stadium could not help but notice that a normally cool-headed gent like Pollock behaved in that very odd manner -­ even given that his side had just been knocked out of the Champions Trophy.

Word then started to get around in media circles that all was not well in the Proteas camp. Klusener, it was said, was so contemptuous of spin bowling that he refused to practice in the nets against that species of bowler. It is hardly surprising, then, that even a part-time off-spinner like Virender Sehwag was able to tie Klusener up in knots. Displaying the most basic of technique, Klusener backed away to the on-side early, wound up that sledgehammer willow of his, and attempted to brutally thump the ball out of sight. Each time the bowler varied his line, length or pace, the ball hardly left the square.

But perhaps this allegation is being a tad too harsh on Klusener. What is interesting is, it is the less diabolical of two.

"Just because you banned one man called Hansie Cronje, suspended another, and warned a third, do you think you've got rid of performance-rigging in South Africa?" asked one journo. He had a point. The table we were sitting at went dead silent. A few eyebrows were raised in tacit agreement of the unsaid. There was some outrage at the suggestion of irregularity without a shred of evidence, but book-makers hardly really hand out receipts to players after under-the-table deals.

It was at that moment that the damage done by half-baked investigations into matchfixing hit home. Every unusual match looks dodgy, every uncertainty less glorious. And for this, every person who ever tampered with the proceedings is guilty. But so are the officials who conducted inquiries that turned out to be merely cover-ups. The Chandrachud Commission in India, the Qayyum Report in Pakistan, the King Commission in South Africa...which one of those can truly claim to have gotten to the bottom of the problem?

Sadly enough, till somebody somewhere does, a large section of cricket-lovers across the world will undeservingly have to bear the cross of not knowing whether they have just witnessed an astounding come-from-the-back win or an astounding case of match-fixing.

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