"Cricket. Bloody Hell."

GH watches South Africa grind Australia down

Next summer, South Africa will host no Test matches. Although Steve Waugh ascribed this to their not caring about the format, it is basically because they cannot afford to. Now they look set to become Test cricket’s champions. Make sense? Well, nothing much about today seemed to, and that’s when the game is surely at its best.

South Africa has also never won an ICC event. That has never really made sense, so numerous over the decades have been their outstanding cricketers. The mace is held by a team loaded with talent and replete with resources; Temba Bavuma’s team contains probably only one bowler and one bowler of undisputed world-class, yet is separated from destiny by only sixty-nine runs with eight wickets in hand.

Overnight Finn Allen, we learned, had hit nineteen sixes in 51 balls for the San Francisco Unicorns - the way of the future, we hear so often. This match has contained one six in 1409 balls, while South African fans have here been applauding defensive shots, cheering singles, and chorusing hallelujahs for boundaries. In all, a wonderfully weird twenty-four hours for cricket.