Cricket's innocence lies in ashes

There's a fair chance he doesn't realise this but Hansie Cronje has a whole lot more in common with Uncle Bulgaria than he could ever imagine. Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder? Let me explain.

It was some time in the mid-1970s, the venue was the State cinema in Phibsboro and I was attending my first live gig.

Ah yes, The Wombles had come to Dublin, and here they were, live, in the flesh.

After treating us to a few of their seminal chart toppers (including "Oh, la la la, hey banana, don't you slip on the skin, oh, la la la la, hey banana, Womble up the rubbish and put it in the bin") they came down among us little ones and handed out balloons. (They hadn't really cottoned on to merchandising back then, if they had Orinoco wouldn't be working in a garden centre in Croydon now).

Uncle Bulgaria was heading my way, down my aisle, tantalisingly holding out an orange balloon when another eight-year-old rose in front of me, like Malcolm O'Kelly in a lineout, and stole it from my reach. In time she walked again, but the balloon didn't survive the ensuing melee.

Neither did my innocence survive the gig. You see, Uncle Bulgaria came so close that I could see a little rip in his "suit" and spotted a human hand where there should have been a furry paw. I looked into his eyes but only saw beads, looked at his nose and only saw stuffed velvet, looked for his ears and found none, then spotted two slits in his head through which I could see . . . human eyes peering out at me. The Wombles weren't . . . real. They were . . . frauds. They were . . . men in suits.

Some years later my English teacher asked me what I thought Patrick Kavanagh meant by the line "through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder" in his poem Advent and I said I reckoned Kavanagh must have been at that gig too and spotted the man inside Uncle Bulgaria, through the chink in his furry suit. "No wonder he took to drink - I nearly did too, sir". I barely passed English that year.

Anyway, I only feel able now to exhume that painful moment from my early life because I had an even worse Uncle Bulgaria moment during the week, brought on by match-fixing allegations against South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje, and his admission that he'd taken a few bob from a bookmaker.

In the course of the discussions following this revelation England's - or rather, Ian Botham's - Ashes' victory over Australia in 1981 came up in the conversation. Now, nobody is claiming that anything dodgy went on then, they're simply, gently, raising eyebrows in a quizzical and slightly alarmed way on being told that a couple of the Aussies from the Headingley Test in that series put a few quid on England to bowl Australia out for not much more than 100 to sensationally and unbelievably win the Test. Which they did.

Now, this isn't a new revelation, but those who know their cricket reckon that if Hansie Cronje can get up to no good then there's not much hope for the rest of the sport, and you can start doubting the result of a fair few Tests and one-day matches played since the days we sang:

"Underground, overground, Wombling free,

The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we."

Maybe the result of that Test - which, if I recall correctly, featured Dilley, Willey and Lillie (the Teletubbies of their day) - was entirely bona fide but it doesn't half hurt that even the most minuscule of a shadow of a doubt is now being cast over it, Bob Willis' eight for 43 and Botham's all-round heroics. We're talking shattered innocence here, again.

Until then I regarded cricket as the ultimate cure for insomnia, maybe because I'd watched too many Geoffrey Boycott innings, but the end of that series was truly awe-inspiring. Botham was like a cross between King Kong and Roy of the Rovers and produced some extraordinary performances, the like of which I've rarely seen, in any sport, since.

For all his faults, Botham had more sporting passion and fire in his belly than just about anyone I'd ever seen, but even the mildest of hints that not every Aussie in the finale of that series defended their wicket with quite as much passion as they should have (or bowled as straight a line as they might have) is a whole lot more harrowing than the realisation that animals died to put fur on the backs of The Wombles.

Aah, this Cronje chink in the armour of cricket's reputation leaves me wondering. Is nothing sacred, even the most wonderful of sporting memories?