Cramer VS Cramer: When Fairy Tales become Horror Stories

We all love fairy tales, but in many cases, they degenerate into a horror story of epic proportions.

 

In the sporting sense, I don't think the most accomplished author with an extremely fertile imagination, would ever have been able to dream up the cheating, lies, deceit and death which have characterized what I have covered and observed in the past two decades.

 

The instances where, virtually overnight, fairy tales become horror stories, dreams become shocking nightmares and great milestones and accomplishments are suddenly forgotten, erased from the memory or paled into insignificance.

 

In my career as a sports journalist, I have watched a great cricket captain and player fall from grace, a cancer survivor from Austin, Texas, who beat the odds to win the Tour de France a record seven times exposed as a liar and a cheat, an affable cricket boss brought to his knees for serious corporate mis-management and now an athletics icon accused of pre-meditated murder.

 

Sadly, it is these headline hogging negative events and the facts associated with it that stick in my memory, while I often have to go back in my scrapbook or an applicable online source to recollect a memorable rugby triumph, Test or ODI Series victory or a medal-winning Olympic performance.

 

But our esteemed news team, including myself as a sports journo', maintained journalistic integrity, had a commitment to our listeners to present the facts as they happened without being over-analytical and refraining from personal comments on the highly sensitive matter.

 

Things have returned to a degree of normality in the news and sports cluster here following the conclusion of the Oscar Pistorius murder saga and subsequent bail hearing, which became a trial within a trial and attracted huge international attention.

 

There was a similar frenzy when Lance Armstrong spilled the beans to talk show queen Ophra Winfrey, but I was probably affected to a lesser degree because I did not have a personal association with the cyclist.

 

In the interim, South Africa were clobbering Pakistan on the cricket field in a three-Test series, Graeme Smith took the field for a milestone 100th Test as captain of the Proteas  and the current crop retained the ICC Test Mace. But the Oscar saga would just not disappear from the front pages of newspapers worldwide.

 

So to say that the events of Valentine's Day 2013 and the disbelief that accompanied it never floored me, would be a blatant lie, having built up a good relationship with the iconic Bladerunner over the years.

 

Similarly I was in an emotional knot and my world crumbled following Proteas captain Hansie Cronje's admission in 2000 that he took bribes from bookmakers to provide information and fix matches. He was banned from playing cricket for life for his part in a match- fixing scandal.

 

I was rocked by the Hansie Cronje match-fixing scandal, but forced to cover the resultant King Commission diligently, accurately and honestly in my capacity at the time as a cricket writer for a leading daily newspaper, without allowing my very good relationship with Cronje to cloud my judgement.

 

I was hurt to learn of the extent of the deceit, the lies and the double life that Cronje had been leading as the facts came to light during the King Commission.

 

Similarly I had a very decent relationship with the affable former Cricket South Africa chief Gerald Majola and always found him to be very approachable. Over and above my liaison with him in his capacity as the head honcho of South Africa's cricket controlling body, Majola and I shared a mutual passion for the sport of boxing.

 

We would often sit in close proximity, if not next to, one another at tournaments at a nearby casino, just east of Johannesburg.

 

Then like a haymaker punch to the face which floored me for the full count, I suddenly found myself having to sit through, and cover, a lengthy Commission of Inquiry, ordered by Sports Minister Fekile Mbalula and chaired by retired Judge Chris Nicholson, to investigate allegations of corruption, mismanagement, breaches of the Companies Act and the non-disclosure of Indian Premier League bonus payments under Majola's watch.

 

Majola was subsequently suspended for 180 days pending a disciplinary hearing and following due disciplinary procedure, dismissed from his position in absentia, after waiving his right to attend the proceedings.

 

I also can't deny that the sympathy bones in my body weren't aching a touch when Majola faced us during a media interview following his grilling by the NIcholson Commission.

 

Now you can well understand how relieved I am to be covering hard-core sport again and following the events on the field of play, without being side-tracked by the upheaval off it.

 

Just for how long, will be determined by the length of time it takes for the Oscar Pistorius murder saga to go to trial. But with all the alleged shenanigans in our sporting world, one never knows. This is South Africa after all.

 

- Trevor Cramer