‘Every time someone is caught for fixing, Hansie is in headlines’
JOHANNESBURG: Every June 1, Hansie Cronje’s closest friends gather at the wall of remembrance at Grey College where his ashes have been laid to rest, to have a Coke and a doughnut. It’s a sight that makes his sister Hester Parsons wonder how he would have looked had he been alive now. That’s the biggest question haunting her ever since Hansie died in a plane crash on June 1, 2002.
To the world, Hansie Cronje was that successful South Africa captain till the match-fixing scandal caught up with him. To his family, he remains a loved brother and son who all looked up to for help and guidance. Moving on from the ignominy has been hard but harder has been the reality that their Hansie isn’t around anymore.
“Not too often that we don’t think about him. When the family gets together, there is a missing chair,” said Gordon Parsons, Hester’s husband and bowling coach at Highveld Lions. “What hurts is when somebody is caught for match-fixing, Hansie is in the headlines. So it’s almost like it will never go away,” said Gordon who was playing under Hansie’s captaincy at Free State when he met Hester.
“We didn’t believe it. You feel shattered,” Hester said from Potchefstroom where she is a teacher and cricket coach. “I think it wasn’t handled properly and there wasn’t enough guidance. Hansie loved India. It’s ironic that all this happened in India,” she said.
“You know Hansie said on arriving in his hotel that he would find gifts on his bed. He thought there were some really generous people. You don’t know where the gifts come from,” said Hester. “I was angry at him. Why didn’t he say no? When he was so lonely and scared, why did he not share it with us?”
Hester and Gordon won’t be able to forget the first time they met Hansie after the scandal broke. “He had to try and hide from the press. He then went to hide at a friend’s house where we went to meet him. He just said sorry. He was crying,” said Hester.
“Hansie felt he let us down. He was a broken man. He had asked Peter Pollock to baptise him later. And for two years, he couldn’t look up, look people in their eyes. A few weeks before he passed away, he started to look up. Mum was saying ‘Hansie is looking like Hansie again’. And then he passed away.”
Even the news of his death didn’t come to them in as many words. “Me and Hester were on our way to the wedding of Jac- ques Faul, who was the CEO of Cricket South Africa. The first SMS didn’t make sense. It read ‘Hansie’s plane overdue’. But didn’t he fly last night? Later we found out that he had missed his flight,” said Gordon.
“He was driving through Potchefstroom before that and had called us, saying ‘Hey! Guess where I am. I’m driving on Mandela Road.’ I asked him to stop by and have breakfast with us but he said he was in a hurry and had to catch a flight from Johannesburg to George (where he was living with wife Bertha) for the weekend.”
How was Hansie as a family man? Gordon remembers the man who used to run to release his frustration and drag him along. He firmly believes Hansie would have been a great father if he had children with Bertha who remarried two years after Hansie’s death and stays at the same house in George with two boys who have taken to cricket. “When you see them, you forget that they are not Hansie’s children,” said Hester.
Only 13 months younger, Hester was Hansie’s darling sister who used to be bullied into bowling at him for hours and coaxed into setting up dates with her friends. “She wouldn’t be my friend any longer if he broke up with her,” laughed Hester.
Cricket remains an integral part of Hansie’s family.
His father was once president of the Free State Cricket Union. Frans was once a physio attached with the South Africa team. Hester coaches a women’s team and even her daughter Alexandrea is a qualified scorer besides being a masters in clinical psychology. Cricket has given them a way of life. But it probably came at too heavy a price.
Hansie felt he let us down. He was a broken man. He had asked Peter Pollock to baptise him later. For two years, he couldn’t look up, look people in their eyes. HESTER PARSONS, On her late brother Hansie Cronje