Cricketer Cronje Dies in Air Crash

Hansie Cronje, the cricketer who brought shame on the game by taking bribes to fix matches, died yesterday in a plane crash in his native South Africa.

Cronje, the 32-year-old ex-South Africa captain, perished when a cargo plane he was travelling in came down in the rugged Outeniqua Mountains in the Western Cape province amid heavy rain and thick mist. It crashed outside the city of George, about 500km east of Cape Town, after a flight from Johannesburg.

The poor weather initially prevented rescuers reaching the wreck, but they could see three bodies beside it. Cronje was certified dead at the scene by a doctor.

Cricket was last night divided over the death of a player who came to symbolise the corruption that has badly dented the sport's image in recent years.

Shaun Pollock, the current South Africa captain, walked off during the Warwickshire-Hampshire match when he heard the news. His wife, Trisha, later said: 'He needs a few hours to recover.'

While ex-England batsman Allan Lamb lamented his friend's passing, the former England coach David Lloyd was blunt: 'Hansie Cronje will go down as the man who disgraced cricket.'

Former England captain Ian Botham said: 'It is a very sad time, but unfortunately he will be remembered for the wrong reasons.'

Cronje captained South Africa in 53 Test matches before sparking the match-fixing scandal in 2000 when Indian officials said they had tape-recordings of him talking to an Indian bookmaker during the team's tour of the sub-continent.

Several teammates later told a government commission of inquiry that in 1996 Cronje had told them they had been offered up to $350,000 (£230,000) to deliberately lose a one-day match against India.

Cronje denied that, but admitted taking $100,000 from gamblers in return for match information and conveying other offers of cash from bookmakers for teammates to under-perform. It was a bombshell confession, and led to inquiries into how corrupted by bookmakers the game had become.

He was banned for life by the South African Cricket Board, a decision later endorsed by the game's global governing body, the International Cricket Council. In South Africa, one of the country's sporting heroes became a byword for cheating.

He retreated from public life and had started working for a machinery company. Recently he had begun building a low-key media profile. In his last interview before his death, Cronje told Cape Talk radio station last Friday how he regretted the scandal but was looking forward to the future.

'It's important to put that chapter behind you, it's obviously not something you're proud of, but as I say life goes on,' he said.

The country's 702 radio station devoted its entire afternoon's programming to Cronje's life and death. 'It was such a wretched end to what turned out to be a wretched life,' said presenter David O'Sullivan.

John Robbie, a sports commentator in South Africa, said he had recently met Cronje and 'it seemed he was getting his life back together. He will always be remembered as a fine cricketer, but his name will forever be linked with what happened. He was one of those guys who always had a facade. You always felt that behind the black eyes there was something different going on.'