An inquest blames pilot errors - who shifted from the norm for the plan crash which killed Hansie Cronje, the former South African cricket captain and the man in the middle of the matchfixing scandal not many years ago.

More from BBC:

Judge Siraj Desai said the air crew had not followed procedures on their second attempt to land at George airport. “The complacency of the pilot in command was surprising and … the co-pilot failed under the circumstances to do what a reasonable pilot would have done,” the Cape High Court judge said at the conclusion of the inquest on Monday.

During the inquest it emerged that the pilots Willie Meyer and Ian Noakes - apparently believing they were flying over the sea - had ignored 13 ground proximity warnings given by navigation equipment on the Hawker Siddeley light aircraft.

The pilot and co-pilot were killed as well in that crash. So was there some thing strange which caused Cronje’s death and not a normal accident? We can try and draw conclusions of what happened on that day but we cannot know for certain..

I do feel sad that Cronje died so early though. Guys like Md. Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja, who were also deep in the match fixing controversy, were soon rehabilitated into social life in India courtesy page 3 parties and suchlike. [via] I am not saying it was right for them to be accepted back. However, the death of Cronje will wrankle. You can’t help but feel sad at a life which ended early, whatever the reason for the death.

There is no justification for match fixing and playing into the hands of greed. With some one like Hansie Cronje, you feel betrayed much more. Cronje was one of the best captains and cricket brains I saw. He was a modern strategist and would utilise his resources to the fullest extent. Apart from the strategy, another key ingredient of the Cronje captaincy was the push he gave his players. They would try that extra bit which lead to success - being the best one day side around 1997-99 and challenging Australia for the best test side spot). No wonder Allan Donald was shattered when the revelations on Cronje surfaced.

Cronje mystifies the cricket world just like Douglas Jardine did. There were many similarities between Jardine and Cronje - well off backgrounds, brilliant captains and suchlike. There were dissimilarities as well - for example, while Jardine risked it all for victory for his team, Cronje did it for a few dollars. Neither can be excused though as what Jardine did with bodyline, though within the rules, could have killed some one and life is far costlier than a cricket match.

Four years have passed since the Cronje death and a bit more since the match fixing scandal news was first broken by the Delhi police. We still talk on Hansie Cronje and the many aspects regarding him and every thing around him. We do not know how free the cricket world is of match fixing now or how deep the whole racket was back then. Cronje remains in the news and the small talks. I read a few months back that a movie will be made on Cronje’s life.

Was it Cronje’s bad luck that he was the man in the centre stage of the match fixing scandal when he could well have been just the tip of the ice berg? Maybe. We do know one thing though - many years from now, people will still be talking about him.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 14th, 2006 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Cricket. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.