New SA Cricket Boss Wants Settlement With Cronje

Paul Martin

Even before Gerald Majola, aged 41, begins his reign as South Africa's new cricket supremo on January 1 2001, he is willing to court controversy.

In an exclusive interview with rediff.com and Sport Africa Broadcasting, Majola urged the world's cricket bosses to end the recriminations over cricket match-fixing and csorruption.

"We have to forget the past," the new chief executive of the United Cricket Board (UCB) declared. "What is done is done and cannot be undone."

He is not advocating that the guilty go unpunished, but he wants the focus shifted to the framework for the prevention of future misconduct. "Our players must not be lured into it again," he said.

Majola is the first black man to be put in day-to-day control of the country's second- biggest sport. This means he would feel less restrained should he choose to slam South Africa's disgraced ex-captain Hansie Cronje and to attack the old system.

Instead, Majola has chosen, in this interview, to launch what amounts to a stunning display of loyalty to the man whose actions plunged world cricket into its greatest crisis.

There have been strong and bitter attacks on Cronje as a person and as a leader, particularly from UCB president Percy Sonn. But Majola showed a much more tolerant attitude.

"There must not be a vendetta against him personally," Majola told rediff.com. "I cannot write him off as a human being. I cannot hold a grudge against him as a person. Yes he is flawed. But he made a mistake like any other human being. I feel pity for him."

Majola believes Cronje should be allowed to get involved in some cricket-related activities. "No-one can stop him from watching cricket," said Majola, a reference to claims that the UCB's ban-for-life included his being barred from any cricket ground under the aegis of the national governing cricket body.

He also rejected suggestions, attributed to Sonn, that the UCB would put pressure on sponsors and broadcasters not to let Cronje be used as a television commentator, a lucrative profession for retired cricket stars.

"Who is to commentate is up to sponsors and television stations," he said. "They and they alone can choose."

Majola revealed that as a deal with the United Cricket Board was being discussed between it and Cronje's lawyers. But these were scuppered by the decision of Cronje's lawyers to make as a court challenge to the life ban imposed on the player. That challenge is still not finalised, though Cronje has won another legal battle. That was when his lawyers managed to get as a court in cape Town to rule that Judge King cannot re-convene Commission's hearings into Match-fixing and corruption, unless Cronje or his lawyers are present. That ruling means there will be no more hearings until late in February, when Cronje's lawyers will be available.

Majola feels Cronje's actions now in using the law to protect him will alienate the cricketing establishment and the public still further. It made Cronje look evasive, and elongated as a process that the public already felt had lasted far too long.

"If I were him I would have laid low and try to recuperate my public acceptability," Majola stated. He added that it was important for the UCB to talk to Cronje via his lawyers, "to avoid him becoming dented as as a human being".

He added: " I still think the UCB should sit down with Cronje after the Commission wraps up, and reach some arrangement."

(In another article rediff.com will report Majola's views on how to transform cricket and make it the biggest sport in South Africa, and the world leader..)

Mail Cricket Editor