Cronje won't name names

Sacked South African captain Hansie Cronje refused yesterday to name players who might have been in favour of accepting a $200,000 bribe in 1996 to throw a one-day international in India.

"It may put people in a bad light and after five or six years I may be incorrect in naming players," Cronje told the King Commission into cricket match-fixing on the second day of his cross-examination.

State prosecutor Shamila Batohi asked him yesterday which players had been prepared to give serious consideration to the bribe of $200,000 from an Indian gambler if the team lost a one-day international in Mumbai, India, in December 1996.

Cronje had passed the offer on to the team at a meeting. He said three players - Daryll Cullinan, Derek Crookes and Andrew Hudson - had been strongly opposed to the offer and that "a bunch of young players just listened." He said the senior players in the meeting included Dave Richardson, Brian McMillan, Pat Symcox, Gary Kirsten and Fanie de Villiers. He was not prepared to say, however, whether any of these

players had spoken in favour of taking the money. "It is like a selection meeting when someone usually plays devil's advocate. It would be very unfair to say after the meeting who said what." Pressed by Batohi, Cronje again refused to name names.

Commission head Judge Edwin King eventually said to the advocate: "You make the necessary deductions. You don't need to press Mr Cronje." Earlier Cronje quipped that he should have taken the bribe, offered by Indian jeweller Mukesh Gupta, because the South African team was likely to lose the match.

India won the match by 83 runs against a team weakened by injury and illness. "I probably should have done it. I would have been a richer man today," he said.

Cronje was fired in April after admitting that he had accepted money from bookmakers for forecasting - a revelation which shocked the cricketing world which had believed he was a model captain.