The former opening batsman reveals how Cronje tried to involve the entire team in the "perfect fix" in a one-day match against India in Mumbai in 1996.

"'We have been offered a lot of money to throw a game', he said," Kirsten writes in the book entitled Gazza.

"I swear you could have heard a pin drop. Nobody moved a muscle."

The clandestine meeting took place in Cronje's hotel room, without the then coach Bob Woolmer.

Kirsten added: "In retrospect I think I had gone into instant shock.

"Even if I had wanted to speak I would have been unable to. Hansie carried on talking slowly but clearly.

"I listened but it was out of respect for the captain and a strange fascination with what he was saying rather than any intention to carry out instructions.

"I knew within a few seconds I could not be involved, but I listened.

"He had been asked to create the perfect fix. He spelt out the details of how the match had to pan out, with a spread of scores we needed to be within every five overs.

"I started sweating. It was a bad dream. After eight overs we needed to be one wicket down -- me -- and we needed to have under 25 runs on the board. The idea was absurd.

"I have never got out deliberately in my life. He mentioned a couple of times it would be worth 60 or 70 thousand rand (about 6,000 pounds) each."

Kirsten reveals how a conversation with Cronje about a meal in Dubai in 1999 made him realise "something had gone very wrong".

Kirsten and his wife ate at an expensive restaurant, while Cronje took his wife to Burger King.

"(He asked) why I would want to waste money on an expensive restaurant when you could get perfectly adequate food for a quarter of the price in a cheap restaurant," Kirsten writes.

"It was a small example but it disturbed me.

"I couldn't get the idea out of my head he would rather eat a burger than have a very pleasant meal.

"He was very wealthy but far too driven by it. I think our relationship changed a bit that day."

Cronje received a life ban from cricket for his involvement in match-fixing before dying in a plane crash two years ago.

A movie about Cronje's life will start filming next year, to be made by his brother Frans.