Hansie Cronje
Hansie Cronje was South Africa’s golden boy, the country’s charismatic cricket captain who held the nation’s record for matches captained and matches won as captain. Then Cronje was implicated in aiding betting syndicates by taking money to fix matches. Several of his teammates told a government commission that Cronje offered them money to throw a match — a claim Cronje denied. But he did admit to receiving $100,000 from gamblers in exchange for match information and passing on further offers from gamblers to teammates to perform badly. Unsurprisingly, the United Cricket Board of South Africa banned him for life in 2000. The terrible climax to Cronje’s life came two years later, when he died in a plane crash. Rumors persist that Cronje was murdered on the orders of a betting syndicate, but his fall from grace hasn’t dented his popularity in his homeland: as recently as 2004, the country voted Cronje the 11th greatest South African.