Comment: To forgive Cronje, or forget him?

Hansie Cronje's ashes may be still warm but hopefully the variables surrounding his name, which got tainted by his own admission of colluding with bookies, have been laid to rest.

I'm not sure that cricket ever needed saving, but going on the assumption that it did, I'll say this: If Hansie Cronje's admission that he had 'fixed' matches did not save the game in 2000, then cricket is beyond salvation.

Actually, I think Cronje did it for me. And for you. And for cricket fans everywhere. And in my way of thinking that's about all that it takes from a human being who came into this world with his fair share of flaws - like the rest of us. And then again he also did it for himself which is fair enough.

When Cronje sinned he was only 30 - a vulnerable 30, if you can tolerate the redundancy. And be informed he wasn't the only cricket captain to have fixed a cricket match.

There are others too, possibly leading lights in the constellation of corrupt cricketers. They live their lives and turn to the law courts in order to seek redemption, occasionally for a bit of publicity.

Public memory is short. We know who they are. We remember the exciting times they have given us. But they live in disgrace and cope with their sudden plunge to the depths of anonymity.

True they have their BMW's and their Rolexes for company but they have lost their dignity and it will take a long time to get that back. Their names, even though Cronje mentioned them in his testimony, are not worth taking here.

In Cronje's case it took death to put this more complex and emotional matter in perspective. And still people have not been so forgiving.

This may sound profound but life at the top is tough and just weird enough to be unsustainable. Nobody with a modicum of sense nowadays views a cricket match as a morality play.

The huge sums of money riding with every game, endorsements and player earnings in top flight sport ensures that it all adds up to a kind of surreal arithmetic. In situations like this character sometimes flies out of the window.

There is too much personal gain at stake. In competitive sport champions have in a limited span of time (which in their case reads like a lifetime) reaped all the rewards and exhausted all the challenges.

Retirement ensures that they look towards their bank balances and nothing more.

In this case a line like "I want to give something back to the sport," also has a commercial lining to it.

Cronje, in his weaker moments said his novenas to Croesus, but let us not forget that he also played cricket and in the process changed the face of the game in South Africa. Ergo, his contribution as a cricketer can never be devalued.

The world also owes him a debt for being the first to publicly bring out the ills that govern the so-called 'gentleman's game'. Never mind the fact that he was caught in a 'sting' (later well publicised) by the Indian police.

What is important is that Cronje spoke to his conscience and did the right thing: he expressed remorse and a desire to try and give something back to the South African society he had let down in a bid to wash away his sins.

It would have been interesting to see if, when alive, Cronje had any fight left.

He had his faults, greed and an arrogance that went beyond the boundaries of just being good at cricket. One wonders if cowardice was one of them.

Sadly, we'll never know now.