Cronje points his finger at Azhar

Cronje said he had come under intense pressure from a South African bookmaker called Hamid Cassim and his friend Sanjay to throw a match.

King welcomed Cronje, who looked nervous and depressed, to the stand, telling him: “Mr Cronje, I know you’re under strain. I want you to know you have my understanding of your situation.”

Referring to a government offer of immunity from prosecution in return for a full confession, King said: “I want you to be frank and honest with me.”

Cronje detailed his slide to ruin and promised to walk away from the game of cricket, saying: “I will not again play cricket at representative level.”

“Words cannot begin to describe the shame, humiliation and pain which I feel in the knowledge that I have inflicted this on others. To my wife, family and teammates in particular, I apologise,” he said.

Reading a prepared statement, Cronje said he was first offered a bribe in January 1995 before a one-day match against Pakistan.

He said he discussed the offer with teammate Pat Symcox and then rejected it.

He first took money during the South African tour of India in 1996, when Azharuddin introduced him to Mukesh Gupta, later known as MK, who he presumed was a bookmaker or gambler.

Cronje said he accepted $30,000 in a Kanpur hotel room and promised to speak to other players about throwing a match.

“This seemed an easy way to make money, but I had no intention of doing anything,” he said.

Cronje confirmed earlier testimony that he called a team meeting to discuss Gupta’s offer of $200,000 to lose the final one-day match of the tour and that Gupta had agreed to up the offer to $250,000. Again, however, the offer was rejected.

He said Gupta put $50,000 into his private bank account in his hometown of Bloemfontein before the second Test of the 1996 Indian tour to South Africa, but added: “none of these results were fixed or manipulated.”

Cronje said his next contact with a bookmaker was during the England tour this year when a man called Marlin Aronstam called him with offers of donations to charities and personal gifts.

He said Aronstam gave him 50,000 rand ($7,500) and a leather jacket after the final match in which the two sides agreed to forfeit an innings and make a match of a rain-hit Test.

“He said this was in consideration of me giving him information in the future, but did not specify what this information would be,” he said.

Cronje said he responded to an approach by another cricket fan, Cassim, who he knew to be a friend of Azhuruddin before a one-day match against Zimbabwe in January and met him again in Durban a few days later.

He said Cassim introduced him to a man called Sanjay, who gave him a mobile telephone box full of dollars, which he did not count, but which later turned out to be about $10,000.

Sanjay and Marlin contacted him repeatedly during the tour to India this year, sometimes at 2.00 a.m. or 3.00 a.m., pressing him to manipulate match results.

He confirmed earlier testimony about unsuccessful efforts to involve Pieter Strydom, Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher and Lance Klusener and said he had lied to Sanjay and Marlin in telephone calls about fictitious approaches to players.

“The morning of the fifth one-day match at Nagpur, Sanjay phoned me and urged me to go ahead with fixing the match and I gave in. I told him that I would go ahead.

“I spoke to Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams as described in their testimony,” he said in his first admission that he agreed with other players to manipulate a match.

But he said that in the event, they played to win, adding: “the fifth One-Day International was not fixed or thrown.”

Cronje said the final approach was in Dubai, during the Sharjah Cup in March, when an unidentified man offered him $200,000 to lose the match. He said he refused outright.

Cronje ended his testimony with an apology and an appeal for measures to protect sportsmen from gamblers, saying they are “easy prey”.

The inquiry was adjourned to Tuesday, when Cronje will face cross-examination on his statement.