Cronje life ban makes sense

October 13, 2000 by neil manthorp

Neil Man­thorp 13/10/2000

He had already declared a self-imposed ban from all crick­et so why did the UCB have to humil­i­ate him any more and issue a state­ment declar­ing that Han­sie Cron­je would be banned from all crick­et in South Africa?

Last New Year I declared a self-imposed ban on tobac­co. Last night I imposed a 10:00 p.m. cur­few in prepa­ra­tion for SA’s poten­tial­ly pul­sat­ing semi-final against India.

When I promised these things I meant them; real­ly meant them. Then I had a puff of some­one’s smoke and I thought ‘it won’t hurt that much.’ Last night, as I was going to bed, a col­league returned from din­ner at a dif­fer­ent hotel in Nairo­bi and asked me to join him for a ‘night cap’. I got to bed at 11:30.

Han­sie was in the depths of despair when he called it quits with crick­et and he is not going to remain in the depths of despair. He will rebuild his life and his long­ing for crick­et will return. He will, most def­i­nite­ly, play club crick­et in the UK (very lucra­tive­ly) and his pos­si­ble, sub­se­quent involve­ment at provin­cial lev­el would be no more than a nat­ur­al progression.

Laws are laws, how­ev­er, and it was no more than the UCB’s duty to put the pun­ish­ment in writ­ing and make it official.

There are two fur­ther issues, as well.

Cron­je made fools of two gov­ern­ment min­is­ters by lieing to them and deceiv­ing them when they were doing their damnest to help him. Aziz Pahad and Ngconde Bal­four will not for­get their treat­ment and nei­ther will the gov­ern­ment, what­ev­er human­i­tar­i­an rec­on­cil­i­a­tion takes place with Madiba.

Final­ly, the UCB is still fac­ing a legal bill of 1.5 mil­lion Rand which is expect­ed to reach more than dou­ble that, all cour­tesy of Cron­je’s dishonesty.

Yes, they are angry and their action may even have been caused by some spite. Not sur­pris­ing, though, if you take the time to think about it.