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Cronje plays with words -- and with the prosecutor

When day two of the cross-examination of Hansie Cronje came to a premature end amidst wrangling between Cronje's lawyers, deputy public prosecutor Shamila Batohi and Judge Edwin King, two things were abundantly clear.

The first is that Cronje and his lawyers have worked out their gameplan, and the defence. And the second is that Batohi is in no mood to quit until she gets Cronje to name more names than he has, thus far, shown any inclination to.

Cronje's defence is, judging by his responses, simple enough. The building blocks of those are: Yes, I was greedy and motivated by money; yes, I took various monies at various times from various people including Mukesh Gupta and Sanjay Chawla; yes, I discussed match fixing with them, and promised them various things; no, I had no intention of delivering on my promise; I was only stringing them along; no, I never fixed any match or part thereof; no, no other South African player is even remotely involved.

That pretty much sums up all that Cronje has said over the two days of cross questioning -- the first day, yesterday, being a gentle exercise orchestrated by his own lawyer Michael Wallis and the second, today, a more rough and tumble affair with Shamila Batohi revealing, at times, that she could pack a mean punch, and Cronje shadow-boxing with her through the day.

Of interest to Indian audiences is his reference to Mohammad Azharuddin. You will recall that prior to his testimony, it was speculated that he will expose a whole hornet's nest of international corruption. Then came his statement, wherein he named Salim Malik in connection with the John episode, and Mohammad Azharuddin as the man who introduced him to Mukesh Gupta.

Today, on cross, he did some swift back-peddaling and in the process, went some way towards exonerating Azhar when he said that while it was true that Azhar had introduced Cronje to Mukesh Gupta, he, Cronje, to the best of his knowledge did not think Azhar knew what Gupta wanted to talk to Cronje about.

That would have been the perfect out for Azhar -- all he had to do from that point on is say hey, sure, Mukesh Gupta is a businessman, he told me that he wanted to meet Cronje to discuss some business, so I introduced him, that is all there is to it.

The one place where Azhar would seem to have shot himself in the foot, though, is when in the immediate aftermath of Cronje's statement last Friday naming Azhar as the man who performed the introductions, Azhar went on record to say that he did not even know who Gupta was.

Now if it is proved that Azhar did in fact know Gupta, the problems for the former Indian captain escalate. Whereas if he had the good sense to have stayed silent initially, he would at this point be sitting pretty, with Cronje himself having given him a clean chit, for free.

To get back to the proceedings of the day, Cronje came across as less than believable when he claimed that he did not even know where a sum in excess of $ 130,000 came from, and how that amount got into his account.

More to the point, Cronje came across as a man without any moral fibre to speak of. At one point, he said that he accepted payment, knowing that the amount was being paid to ensure his future 'friendship' -- a statement that made you wonder just how many pieces of silver Cronje would sell his 'friendship' for.

At another point, when asked if Sanjay was a friend, Cronje says, "Yes, he would take me out to dinner." This, taken in concert with his earlier statements about how he would bank most of his allowance thanks to the generosity of South African hoteliers, gives you the image of the father of all Scrooges.

But more importantly, Cronje's testimony revealed that there was no honour even among thieves. On the one hand, he admits that he was discussing fixing, and taking money knowing fully well what was expected of him. And on the other, he goes on to admit that he took the money intending to simply string the Sanjays of this world along, and not do what they asked him to.

Scruples, apparently, is a word alien to the Cronje vocabulary.

The fireworks, though, began only towards the end of the day's proceedings, when Batohi after a lot of general questions, homed in on the transcripts released by the Delhi police, copies of which had been submitted to the South African authorities by Interpol.

The minute she brought the transcripts into the equation, Cronje's lawyers were up in arms. They claimed that they had no knowledge of these transcripts, that they had not seen them, that it was unfair to ask their client questions about transcripts which neither he nor his lawyers had seen.

If that is true, then Cronje and his lawyers must be the only people in the cricketing world not familiar with the contents of those transcripts, which have been the subject of debate, discussion, and analysis ever since early April when they were first released.

After a lot of wrangling, Shamila Batohi began asking specific questions relating to the transcripts, and Cronje went into stall mode.

Everything came to an abrupt end when Batohi asked Cronje what he meant when he told Sanjay that Gibbs, Boje, Strydom and Cronje himself were playing. Did that mean that they would be tailoring their performance?

At this point, incredibly, Cronje claimed that it only meant that the players named would be playing in the match.

Batohi's natural follow-up question would have been: Immediately after that statement, Mr Cronje, Sanjay asks you who else is playing, and you say, No one. Does this mean that in the match referred to, only four players played for South Africa?

Obviously, in context of that conversation, the word 'play' was used to indicate those who would participate in the fix. And that is precisely the admission Cronje hopes to avoid making.

The storm resultant on that last question caused Judge King to abruptly adjourn proceedings, in order to give Cronje and his lawyers time to familiarise themselves with the contents of the transcripts.

The cross-examination is scheduled to begin at 0900 am South Africa time -- at which point, Batohi will revert to the question that was left unanswered. It will be interesting to see what Cronje and his lawyers come up with, after a night of brainstorming.

Check out today's testimony