Ewie Cronjé’s pain ends at last

“He was very good son and he was a very good captain. He was the best captain South Africa ever had.” - Ewie Cronjé on his son, Hansie.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

A decent man died in Bloemfontein on Monday. He played, he coached, he administered, he commentated, he mentored. He was the kind of cricket person who was comfortable among important personages and equally at home helping to pull on the covers. But it is as a father that he will be remembered: one of his sons was Hansie Cronjé.

If you mentioned Nicolaas Everhardus Cronjé in conversation, in South Africa and beyond, few would know who you were talking about. If you spoke of Ewie Cronjé, everyone did. From a distance he looked magisterial. Up close he had a grandfather’s warmth. He afforded the same basic respect to juniors and seniors alike, and expected nothing more than basic respect from them. Here, you couldn’t help thinking, was a man who knew right from wrong and had the courage to say which was which.

So how had the most infamous fixer cricket has yet known emerged from under his wing?

Ewie Cronjé didn’t shy away from that line of questioning in an interview with the Bangalore Mirror in December 2013: “Show me the evidence. Which activities? What did he do, tell me? I wanted to know what wrong did he commit and which match did he fix. I’ve tried to find answers to these questions but no-one has provided the answers. It was never established. That’s why I’m asking you what wrong did he do? That is why I’m asking you what match did he fix? He should never have been banned. He was very good son and he was a very good captain. He was the best captain South Africa ever had.”

On one level, that was a father talking about his son. On another, he was a man in deep denial. On still another, he was asking for evidence of transgressions that, all these years on, have not been proven.

Before Hansie Cronjé admitted, in April 2000, to taking money to influence the outcome of matches, his father was among the most liked people in South African cricket. Afterwards he was easily the most pitied. What had the poor man done to deserve this? The question became too painful to be asked, even thought, in the wake of Hansie Cronjé’s death in a plane crash in June 2002.

But Ewie Cronjé was more than the father of a son who had veered off the straight and narrow. Another of his and San-Marie Cronjé’s sons, Frans Cronjé, played 50 first-class matches at hooker for Free State’s rugby team and 56 first-class cricket matches as a bustling allrounder for Free State, Griqualand West and Border. A daughter, Hester Cronjé Parsons, was part of the management of the North West women’s team who were unbeaten for the entire 2018-19 season, when they won the national one-day and T20 titles and triumphed at the National week.

Ewie Cronje played 27 first-class matches for Free State as an off-spinner who batted at No. 8 on debut. By his fifth match he had progressed to No. 5. He rose to the No. 3 berth and, once, opened before, in his later years, gracefully sliding down the order. That he captained Free State for a third of his first-class career despite scoring only one century and claiming one five-wicket haul summed him up: he was a servant of the game first, a leader second, and only then a player. Did he do enough to address the glaring racial, social and political inequalities in cricket and beyond in the South Africa of his time? Probably not, but he was far from alone among whites in that regard.

Ewie Cronjé worked tirelessly to elevate Free State from the B-section backwater they were during his playing days to the perennial competitors they became during the late 1980s and 90s, when they won three first-class titles and six one-day championships. He coached at Free State University, led the Free State Cricket Union from 1983 to 1990, became a regular and erudite voice on Afrikaans commentary teams, and in 2012 was given the Khaya Majola Lifetime Achievement Award, Cricket South Africa’s highest honour. It was no less an accolade that almost everybody who knew him prefixed his name with the Afrikaans word for uncle. He was “Oom Ewie” to hundreds of thousands of people.

Ewie Cronjé’s last struggle was with stomach cancer. He spent many of the last days of his 80 years at home in bed. On the wall above the headboard hangs, still, a picture of the man he called “the best captain South Africa ever had”. No-one convinced him otherwise. No-one even tried.

First published by Cricbuzz.