HANSIE CRONJE, MATCH-FIXING AND PLANE CRASH THAT LEFT A COMPLEX LEGACY

Inside a wood-panelled annex of an Edwardian building in Cape Town the stricken figure of Hansie Cronje lay crumpled on the floor.

- TIMOTHY ABRAHAM (BBC SPORT JOURNALIST)

Away from the flashbulbs, and the media feeding frenzy, in the bowels of the Centre of the Book in the city’s legal district, the exhausted former South Africa cricket captain, clad in a charcoal suit, had collapsed in tears.

His father Ewie and brother Frans tried to comfort him. Hansie had just given evidence to the King Commission - the inquiry charged with investigating match-fixing allegations in cricket of which he was at the centre.

Just under two years later and both Ewie and Frans would be pallbearers at Hansie’s funeral following his shock death in a plane crash.

It is now 25 years since Cronje’s life was turned upside down, and cricket was thrown into crisis, by a scandal which rocked the sport.

Cronje’s story, reexamined in Sport's Strangest Crimes on BBC Sounds, is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Wessel Johannes ‘Hansie’ Cronje was born into a sporting, and deeply Christian, family in Bloemfontein.

Cronje was educated at the prestigious Grey College where he was head boy, captained the school in both rugby and cricket, and was earmarked for great things.

Ex-South Africa fast bowler Allan Donald, a childhood friend of Cronje who attended the Technical High School in the same city, said that even as a teenager the young Hansie was a “a deep thinker” who had “leadership qualities all over him”.

Cronje was appointed Orange Free State captain aged 21 and the batting all-rounder soon became a part of the post-apartheid South Africa team which reemerged on the international stage.

He was handed the captaincy of the Proteas in 1994 and his astute tactics and calm assurance gave him a statesmanlike air as he turned the team into a formidable international side.

Cronje also forged a close personal relationship with president Nelson Mandela.