Memories of former South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje before his fall from grace are still deeply etched in the minds of many South Africans, even those who know or care little about cricket.

Cronje, the main character in the judicial inquiry into match-fixing at international contests, is a man who was used by advertisers to build confidence in post-apartheid South Africa.

One advertisement - which adorned street poles in major South African cities until recently - showed a young black boy holding a cricket bat. Across his face was a broad smile, not unlike the smile which lit up Cronje's face after a South African test match victory. The caption below the photograph read: "The Hansie of the future."

The Hansie ad was designed to fulfil two purposes: to win blacks over to cricket in greater numbers and to advance cricket as a game capable of promoting and consolidating reconciliation between white and black South Africans. Hansie, the young Afrikaner man with the wide, white-toothed smile and the strong Christian convictions, was a symbol of the time.

Now, of course, he has fallen, having on his own admission accepted money from bookmakers in exchange for information and - worse still - having, according to the testimony given under oath, attempted to bribe some of his team-mates into under-performing with bat and ball for his greater financial gain.

His cricket comrades aside, the sense of disappointment has perhaps been most acute in Cronje's family (though they have stood loyally by him) and in the Afrikaner community (which fears that having been presented as a role model for post-apartheid South Africa he may now become a stereotype for Afrikaner deceit).

But the disillusionment has spread far beyond family and tribe because the African National Congress government sees sport as a terrain to breakdown apartheid-induced racial prejudices and regards sporting heroes as agents for forging a new non-racial patriotism.

Seen in that context, Cronje is more than a man who has fallen from grace (after being tempted by Satan, according to his own written confession); he is a national idol who has betrayed the hopes invested in him to help build a better future.

Cronje's disgrace has been compounded by his failure to tell the full truth when, in a highly emotional state, he wrote out and signed a confession shortly before the start in April of a three-match one-day international series against South Africa's arch rivals, Australia.

In the confession, Cronje emphatically denied that he spoke to South African players about underperforming in return for money; in their testimony two members of the team, Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams, told the inquiry that Cronje had persuaded them to under-perform in return for monetary gain.

There are two further dimensions which portray Cronje in a particularly bad light: he allegedly used his prestige as captain and international renown as a cricketer to suborn his team-mates into the world of match-fixing and high profits. That allegation is compounded by another: that Cronje planned to short-change his self-confessed proteges in cricketing fraud by offering each of them $15,000 dollars when, according to a transcript of his conversation with the book-maker, he had negotiated $25,000 for them.

As it happened the bet fell through because Gibbs, claiming to have forgotten his betting commitment, scored a scintillating 74 in 53 balls instead of losing his wicket for less than 20 runs.

Cronje is alleged to have approached at least two more members of the team which toured India in March with a proposal that they "throw a match". But unlike Gibbs and Williams, the two cricketers, Lance Klusener and Mark Boucher, stated that they thought Cronje - whose reputation for piety was matched by his profile as a practical joker - was joking.

South Africa United Cricket Board managing director Ali Bacher has provided what might be construed as mitigating evidence for Cronje. Declaring in his testimony to the commission of inquiry that two matches in the 1999 World Cup were fixed, Bacher told Judge Edward King that match-fixing extended far beyond Cronje, and that Cronje was the symptom of a wider problem.