Cape Town: Pilot error was to blame for the 2002 plane crash that killed former South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje, a judicial inquest found on Monday.
Cronje, who was 32 when he died, was widely viewed as one of the country's greatest cricket captains before his career ended in shame in 2000 following a match-fixing scandal.
South Africa's Cape High Court ruled that pilots Willem Meyer, 69, and Ian Noakes, 49, broke with procedure when trying to land the small cargo plane and failed to heed warnings that the aircraft was too near the ground.
Cronje and the pilots died when the plane crashed into mountains in the early hours of June 1, 2002 near his home town of George, about 400 km east of Cape Town.
"(The investigator) agrees that the complacency of the pilot in command was surprising and concedes that the co-pilot failed under the circumstances to do what a reasonable pilot would have done," judge Siraj Desai said.
An official accident report blamed the crash on human error, compounded by bad weather, and faulty ground and aircraft equipment.
Desai said faults in the runway beacon and possibly the plane's compass were not enough to cause the crash.
Cronje was banned from professional cricket in 2000, and his admission of match-fixing sent shock waves through the cricketing world, leading to bans for other South African and international stars.
Once adored by a sports-mad country, he was vilified in the media until his death. He vowed that he had never thrown a match but admitted to accepting around $130,000 from bookmakers to influence the course of matches.
Air crash investigator Andre de Kock told the court the pilots veered off course after aborting a landing and appeared to ignore 13 warnings that the plane was too close to the ground before it hit the mountain.
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