It’s been an incredible couple of weeks and I had my little gloat after Day 3, Duminy Day, in Melbourne. Some more serious reflection is in order.

But before that, let me clarify. In saying that South Africa is the new Australia, I wasn’t arguing that SA are the new number one (though they may be in a few days). I was simply enjoying the role reversal which has been especially surprising and enjoyable over here on the Indian Ocean’s west. For South Africa to be organised, skilful and confident while the other lot were chaotic, disunited, choking, and generally blowing it – that was really a change. Usually it’s us who carry the latter labels. (As always, I’m talking about more than cricket only - see Olympics, football - or even only sport - see electricity, crime-fighting, AIDS, Zimbabwe…. ) For years, Australia have been organised, machine-like, and confident to the point of arrogance. But suddenly, we’ve swapped hats and black is the new white.

Anyway, serious point one. After closing out the Perth run-chase, AB de Villiers said he never doubted SA would make it. His faith may be religion-based, but it’s also true that large totals don’t carry the intimidation they used to. As if to prove this, Bangladesh made 413 today chasing 521 against Sri Lanka, slotting in at 11 on the all-time highest 4th innings scores. If we look at the top 20 on that list (excluding the 654/5 in the Timeless Test), seven were in the past 18 months, and another three since 2002. This has something to do with ODIs, but in fact its cause is the incredible leap in overall run-rates in Tests. This is the lasting legacy of the now-ended Taylor/Waugh/Ponting Mark I era of Aussie dominance. ODIs had been played for more than two decades before Test run-rates went up, after all (and run-rates rose before T20s were on the scene). One of the keys to successful chases in Chennai and Perth was the lack of time pressure so that batsmen could play ‘normal cricket’. Fast scoring in the first three innings now means there’s lots of time left in the game for the chase. Of course, the pace of Sehwag, and to a lesser extent Smith, made it easier for those following, but isn’t their approach itself founded on the Taylor-and-after Aussies? Wasn’t Michael Slater the pioneer here?

Serious point two: the English contribution to SA’s victory. As far as I can tell, only one journalist has noted this - well done, Simon Briggs in the Telegraph. Briggs focussed on Jeremy Snape, SA team psychologist and Professor of the Dark Art of transference of choking to the other team. Even more important in my guesstimation has been Duncan Fletcher, Strategist of the Year 2005 and the only person in SA’s dressing room who had actually been there and done that when it came to beating Australia. When Jacques Kallis batted so much better in Perth to emerge from a slump of Dravidian proportions, I suspected Fletcher’s hand at work. Especially when Kallis and AB smashed 48 off 64 balls on the evening of Day 4, which for me was the key passage of the chase. And when Graeme Smith suddenly became a brilliant tactician in the field at Melbourne, I had no doubt at all that the ideas originated behind Fletcher’s permanently attached Raybans. I know Fletcher isn’t English, but he is an English coach, and it’s nice to get something back from the English after all the players we’ve given them over the years.

But serious point three: credit where credit is due. I am not a big admirer of Smith’s tactical nous, and I agree fully with Samir about Mickey Arthur’s. But one cannot doubt Smith’s leadership abilities and his courage. And one must respect Arthur for bringing Fletcher and Snape - people with greater expertise than his own - into his management team. It’s the mark of a good leader to take advice from experts, and to bring in someone like Fletcher who could conceivably take your job needs courage and a sense of security. In fact, Arthur and Smith’s main achievement may have been to create a climate in which SA cricket has overcome its collective insecurities, something which not even the late and great Bob Woolmer was able to do.

Now if the Cricinfo blogmeister will indulge me with a few hundred words more, I’d like to pose the question as to who is now No. 1 in the world - India or South Africa? Of course they drew their last series back in April, but both have gotten better since then. I’d compare the teams as follows. Opening batsmen – pretty much even between Sehwag and Smith, and between Gambhir and McKenzie, perhaps Gambhir by a nose after McKenzie’s mini-slump in Australia. In the middle order, the two rocks – Kallis and Dravid – cancel each other out, even to their matching slumps. On the left-handers, I’d give it to Prince/Duminy over Yuvraj (or late-career Ganguly for that matter), but de Villiers and Amla can’t be expected to match Tendulkar and Laxman, not at this stage of their respective careers (though 10 or 12 years from now it could be a pretty tight contest). The wicketkeepers are also pretty even, Dhoni the better batsman but Boucher the far more experienced gloveman. The tail must be a toss-up, given Harbahjan’s consistency with the bat and SA’s recent heroics. Turning to the attack, South Africa surely have the better overall pace attack: for all the excellence of Zaheer and Sharma, India’s third seamer is either absent or much weaker, whereas Steyn and Ntini are followed by Morkel and the bonus of Kallis. But it’s no contest in the spin department, though Harris remains highly underrated. So far, India has a slight advantage due to Tendulkar and Laxman. But notwithstanding my comments above on Smith and Arthur, I think India’s leadership – Dhoni and Kirsten – clinches it for them. What a pity these two rising powers aren’t scheduled to play each other until February 2010!

What a day! I don’t remember enjoying a day’s cricket as much since Laxman and Dravid stuck it to Australia at Eden Gardens in 2001.

In South Africa, we tend to exaggerate both the lows and the highs (and not just on the sports field). After last week’s fantastic chase at Perth, many here indulged in typical hyperbole, calling it South Africa’s ‘best ever’ Test win. That’s way over the top – what about the series-clinching Day 5 at Edgbaston only 6 months ago? Or Sydney 1994? Or Faisalabad in 1997, our first series win in Asia? Not to mention quite a few matches in the 1960s and earlier.

If we win this Melbourne Test (or next week’s at Sydney), it will instantly become our best ever win - our first series win in Australia. If Melbourne and Sydney both turn out to be draws, then I’ll agree - Perth is our best ever. And today went an awfully long way to making a Melbourne draw possible, indeed likely.

As everybody knows, Australia is South Africa’s bete noire. I won’t rehearse our losses here (nor our ties….). That’s why the ‘438’ ODI was our best cricket moment of the decade, at least up to 2008. Our repeated losses to Australia are so painful partly because they are usually better at being South African than we ourselves are. That is, they’re better at the ‘braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet’ thing, the sports-mad outdoor life produced by our mix of Anglo-American colonial influence and pioneer-farmer mythology. It may be just one way to be South African, but it’s still a very popular one.

In this culture, prowess on the field far outweighs anything in the lab, at the theatre or on the bestseller lists. So being second best to Australia in cricket and rugby has been hugely disappointing. We couldn’t even beat them at football, our most popular sport but probably only number nine or ten over there. (We managed a draw.) Australia even exports more proteas than we do. That’s our national flower, dammit!!

So day 3 was fantastic. Everything went right for South Africa, everything went wrong for Australia. Okay, everything but one - they didn’t lose a wicket in their short batting stint. But never has Australia looked so thoroughly disorganised, so hang-dog and so shell-shocked on a cricket field, certainly never against South Africa.

It was all the sweeter because of where we started the day. South African cricket is famous for never giving up without a fight to the last ball, and for batting deep into the tail. And it’s also famous for doing what happened yesterday - digging itself deep into the sort of hole that creates opportunities to display these two qualities. So today wasn’t a total surprise.

But there was also a sense today of something different, something new.

Partly it’s because the star today was a black player in only his second test, and in the side unquestionably on merit. Even though black players have performed superbly for South Africa for more than a decade, it’s still argued by some that affirmative action helped them into the side in the first place. Not Duminy.

Partly it’s because none of the four players who added 261 runs today came entirely out of the South African cricket establishment. Harris and Steyn had the advantages of growing up white but went to middle-ranking schools, as did Duminy, while Ntini emerged from a remote poverty-stricken area before his bowling won him a scholarship to an elite school.

But in the end it felt different because we were the ones with a ‘system’, replacing a stalwart like Prince with a reserve like Duminy while Andrew Symonds hopped about and Shane Watson fielded for Lee but couldn’t bowl for him. We were the ones with skills, scoring at a good rate while the Aussies dropped catches and conceded overthrows. And we were the ones with confidence, taking advantage of Aussie disarray to bat them right out of the match and probably the series, while they (dare I say it?) ‘choked’, unable to ram home the huge edge they started with this morning.

In fact, we were the Australians out there today. And perhaps, maybe, possibly, in a little more than a week South Africa will be the new Australia – number one in the world, on merit.

Footnote: braaivleis = barbeque, and 'Braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and chevrolet' was a very popular advertising jingle in South Africa in the 1980s, which captured a certain ethos....

	Andrew Symonds has joined a growing list of ‘problem players' © Getty Images

Kallis and Smith are not alone in believing that Mohali shows Australia going the way of Wall Street. A lot of commentators have jumped to the same conclusion. I’m not so sure that we can decide, after one bad match, that they are truly in decline. After all, just a week earlier in Bangalore, India had been in some difficulty. The difference between the two matches was perhaps the magnificent first innings centuries by Ponting and Hussey and Stuart Clark’s presence.

Yet, if we look a little deeper at Australia, there may well be grounds for ‘cautious optimism’. (An economist cannot be more positive than that right now.)

For years we’ve been told about Australia’s fantastic cricket structure, which spots talent young and raw, and brings it through to the national team, maturing technical skills in academies and inter-state cricket, and just as important, toughening players up emotionally to deal with the rigours of international cricket. This ‘machine’ has been the foundation, it is claimed, of their incredibly successful cricket culture andon-field dominance for 15 years and more. It’s not been down to luck – the coincidence of a ‘golden generation’ of players - but rather to ‘the system’. Replacements for Warne, McGrath and the rest would roll off the assembly line, ready to go.

For quite a while it looked like exactly that was happening, which is one reason why Mohali was such a shock – the size of the defeat, if not the defeat itself. But in fact the machine has been misfiring for some time – in a more conventional corporation, the human resources department would be under serious fire from the board. Let’s look at the list.

Andrew Symonds, a clear case of burnout as Fox’s humane piece showed, has joined a growing list of ‘problem players’. Not long ago, it was Shaun Tait – he was supposed to be coming back but we don’t hear much of him now. Before that, it was Damien Martyn, who cleared his No. 4 desk from one day to the next and is now relaxing in the ICL. Don’t get me wrong – I am totally sympathetic to these players and the pressures they have to face. But I think it’s pretty lousy management to have three star performers ‘hit the bottom’ within two or three years without apparently noticing, let alone doing anything about it.

Then there’s Ashley Noffke. He’d been moving along the assembly line for quite a while and apparently shaping up as a pretty nifty speedster, when suddenly he was, without notice, dumped on the trash heap. He looks pretty good (on paper at least), but is now also off to the ICL. Again, either really poor man-management, or (if he was deemed a ‘lemon’) the failure of the system to refine his talent into the finished article. And it seems that the two bowlers chosen ahead of him – Siddle and Bollinger – had not even been in ‘the system’, underlining that ‘the system’ ain’t working so good.

On the spin bowling front, mismanagement also abounds. The unfortunate career of Stuart MacGill had an appropriate denouement in his farcical retirement halfway through an away Test. Surely his problems in coming back from injury should have been recognised earlier, or he should have been persuaded to play one more game. Then poor Beau Casson is talked up as the great new hope, only to be dumped after a single match, in favour of two unknowns for the India tour. But when Tweedledum gets injured, he’s replaced not by Tweedledee, but by Cameron White, who was presumably no higher than fourth in line just 3 months back. As with Noffke and the fast bowlers, it’s hard to see a ‘system’ at work here: instead it carries a slight whiff of panic, of impulse rather than deliberation.

So, like all dynasties, Australian cricket may be re-discovering that nothing last forever. But like that other faltering global superpower, the US, it would be rash to assume that it is already entirely down and out.

	Bradman has been a legend to me for over 40 years, since I started reading Wisden at age 10 or 11 © Getty Images

On Wednesday last week, August 27th, our Cricinfo ‘handler’ Avi sent us four ‘Different Strokers’ a message asking “No Bradman tributes?”, and reading in full “I must say I’m a little surprised.” Fox has now admirably filled the gap, but my first reaction to Avi was surprise of my own, as it had never occurred to me to write something about Bradman, that day or any other. Avi’s message made me wonder why I had not thought of it – as a cricket-obsessive with a cricket blog, should I have written a tribute, or at least thought of it? The result of my self-reflection is my own small and indirect tribute to the Don.

Bradman has been a legend to me for over 40 years, since I started reading Wisden at age 10 or 11. Of course I’ve only ever seen him bat in some film footage, but I own several auto- and biographies and have read dozens of articles. I can reel off a list of his achievements, and just recently was amazed to learn from "The List that he was top run-getter in only 6 of his 11 Test series. He was outscored five times? By whom? But until last week I would not have been sure of his birth-year, let alone his birth-date.

In fact, the only cricketers whose birthdays I do know are Wasim Akram – because he shares mine – and the Waugh twins, because they’re the day before. I admired all three in different ways, so I enjoy this coincidence. But in general cricketers’ birthdays seem irrelevant, even if their age is not.

On the other hand, I do remember the birthdays of my two lodestars as an economist – Marx and Keynes – and also the years of their birth and death. Every year on May 5 and June 5 respectively, I figuratively tip my hat. And earlier this year, the celebration of Mandela’s 90th birthday, outside South Africa as well as within, felt entirely appropriate.

So why no Bradman tribute? I think it has to do with ‘identity’, about how I see myself, and particularly about the ways in which icons shape identity and vice versa. There is a difference between heroes and icons. Heroes – like Steve Waugh – are people whom one can aspire to emulate, because for all their qualities and achievements, they are flesh and blood, with human imperfections and limits. (And in the TV age are not limited to one’s own nation, as Fox correctly pointed out.) Icons have transcended all that, and moved into the realm of mythology and faith, as the repositories of our hopes and fears, and via their reflected glory, of how we want to be seen by ourselves and especially others.

The iconic realm is where we find Mandela of course, whose iconic status is a core part not only of our South African national founding myth, but also of the global myth of harmony between races. For me as fundamentally a left-leaning political economist, it is also the realm of Marx and Keynes, but this is far from a universal view, to put it mildly.

The iconic is also the realm of Bradman. But not for me. Bradman seems to be iconic for Australians in the way Mandela is for South Africans, a central player in the national founding myth. (The Charles Williams biography is a brilliant discussion of that point.) And as the greatest player who ever lived, he is iconic for the ‘cricket world’, in the way that Mandela is for the human race, or at least for humanists and non-racists.

After the Mandela moment last July, I did not feel that Australia went over the top about Bradman last week. But since I’m not Australian, any piece I might have written would have been because cricket is a core part of my identity. So I conclude that not autonomously writing a Bradman tribute means that I do not see myself as entirely within the cricket world. I may be a cricket-obsessive and I may be helping in a very marginal way to produce the ‘cricket world.’ But I am not a cricket fanatic or fundamentalist, it is not a religion for me. This little self-discovery, about something I think about every day, is rather comforting.

So, Avi, I hope that explains it. It’s not about the Don, he’s right up there in the pantheon.

	The ICC was already in crisis in June over Zimbabwe, but in terms of its own future the Champions Trophy issue is much worse © AFP

So the ICC has postponed the Champion’s Trophy for a year. After South Africa withdrew on Friday, postponement was inevitable. Cricket SA’s announcement came immediately after a meeting with the ICC’s top two officials, both South Africans, and it seems inconceivable that the latter didn’t tacitly approve.

The Champions Trophy controversy reflects the ICC in crisis. Not a crisis of leadership – because of the removal of the Australian MD, as argued by Malcolm Conn in a typically Aussie one-eyed take –– but a structural crisis. Its governance processes have become outdated as the power relations in world cricket have shifted. An unfashionable German guy with a beard long ago referred to this sort of problem as the inevitable consequence of the contradiction between the forces and the relations of production.

The ICC was already in crisis in June over Zimbabwe, but in terms of its own future this is much worse. Not being able to play in Pakistan is a far worse blow to world cricket, but the Champions’ Trophy debacle has so much further polarised the ICC as to render it incapable of making decisions. Its two-thirds majority voting model is no longer feasible, since the Asian group of four has veto power over any proposals if it sticks together, but cannot carry its own proposals against ‘old’ powers Engand and Australia, without support from both SA and West Indies, which it didn’t have in this instance and won’t automatically have in future. The Asian group could not make the tournament happen but it could prevent cancellation as favoured by the old powers. Postponement was simply the least unsatisfactory compromise for both sides. But it was not a proper resolution of the problem, nor was the Zimbabwe decision in June. Sooner rather than later, the ‘least unsatisfactory’ compromise will not be adequate and the organisation will implode.

Not coincidentally, there is a similar problem in the arguably more important world of international trade, where negotiations for a new WTO agreement have collapsed (again). India is at the heart of that crisis too, together with China and Brazil. As in cricket, it is the nouveau riche challenging the presumptive dominance of the ancien regime, and using the existing rules to do so. As in cricket, the outcome is stalemate – at least for now. The emergent countries have acquired enough defensive power to block their opponents’ efforts, but not enough to impose their own solutions or to create a new set of rules..

The future of the WTO is unclear. There are powerful centrifugal pressures in the world trading system, as powerful countries – old and new –focus on building exclusive trading blocs, pushing smaller nations into bilateral trade agreements to try to exclude competing powers.

Where to for the ICC? Can the ‘cricket world’ hold together? The pressures for disintegration have surely been greatly reinforced by the undermining of ICC authority reflected in today’s decision. Private interests – whether IPL, Stanford, ICL or whomever – will be emboldened to test the limits of ICC regulatory power over the cricket calendar and ‘official’ stamp. Franchise-based ‘club’ cricket competitions like the IPL will be expanded, leaving less time for international representative cricket. The incentives for national boards to adhere to the ‘Future Tours Programme’ will be weaker, and countries more likely to pick and choose Test opponents based on marketability and politics (The itinerary provided to England by India for the forthcoming tour was an interesting straw in the wind.)

The ICC can try to resist this, and it probably will try. That would be a mistake.

The proper meaning of ‘crisis’ is not closure or collapse, but ‘turning point’, and a crisis is therefore also an opportunity for renewal. Instead of trying to defend the status quo, inevitably in vain, the ICC should undertake an orderly retreat aiming to leave itself with enhanced authority over diminished territory. In this, cricket would be following the examples of football and rugby. It would require drastically reducing and refocusing the Test and LOI schedules, but at least the ICC would thereby maintain control over international cricket, and could arrange a considered and well-designed Test calendar rather than an unco-ordinated and unplanned one. The alternative is to leave more powerful private interests to structure their own tournaments with international games reduced to the leftovers. Of course there would be numerous contracts to re-negotiate, not least with the TV overlords, but they (and national boards) would be compensated by the continued growth of globally-marketed ‘club’ cricket.

The subtext here is of course more Twenty20 and less Test cricket, not good news for those, myself included, who choose Tests above the rest. But if anything is inevitable in cricket’s future, it is more Twenty20, a lot more, and less time for everything else.

	Graeme Smith’s was not only a captain’s innings, it was his captain’s innings © Getty Images

It’s been all about captains this week, at least in England.

Graeme Smith’s innings was without question a great one, if not a huge surprise to South Africans who have seen that absolutely resolute batsman more than once. You knew he would be there till the game was decided either way, but it was a rollercoaster as the familiar resignation of top-order disintegration was followed by heart-in-the-mouth during the AB de Villiers and Mark Boucher partnerships, and finally relief with 25 or 30 to get. I listened to the hugely entertaining Henry Blofeld for the last hour on the car radio parked outside my daughter’s school – I snuck out of the function inside with Russel and Clive, two other dads. It felt a bit like 1965, South Africa’s last series win in England – plus ça change and all that.

Smith’s was not only a captain’s innings, it was his captain’s innings. His leadership style combines big heart and strong mind, both essential to his Edgbaston effort and to Day 4 at Lord’s, when he led the fight for the draw. But do these qualities make him a great captain?

In leadership, as elsewhere, context is everything. Churchill became a great leader in 1940 when his country’s back was to the wall. Mandela moved from icon to great leader during our democratic transition, when compromise and reconciliation were of the essence. If great cricket captaincy were only about rearguard fightbacks, Smith would deserve the label. But it isn’t and he doesn’t.

Great captaincy also means creating a dominant position and pressing home your advantage. Smith has not really managed that in this series, even against a team in some disarray.

In fact, the opposite of greatness was evident in an important moment - against stronger opposition maybe a series-defining moment – very early in the first Test. Dale Steyn had started with three mediocre overs, making the batsman play only 6 of 18 deliveries. Smith immediately took him off!

Steyn was maybe overawed by Lord’s, maybe a little rusty. But he was 'The Man', the top-ranked test bowler and leader of an attack which – according to SA’s hype – was going to over-run England. Taking him off was utterly defensive, more so in the first half-hour of the series, and after winning the toss. Surely Steyn should have had a chance to get into a rhythm, find a line, work up pace. Some words of encouragement or advice rather than consignment to the outfield. What relief for England, what discouragement for the South Africa attack.

Smith has serious limitations when he has to make the running - the overcautious and rigid mindset of post-re-admission South Africa has long outlived Hansie Cronje. Smith didn’t bother to hide his dissatisfaction with his bowlers in public: journalists described his body language as an ‘air of resignation … he had nowhere to turn, no variety to offer’. But: ‘even so, it was odd that Smith was not more proactive’.

Of course being too proactive was (one of) Michael Vaughan’s problems. Apparently he made 253 field changes in one day during the series. If Smith swings from one extreme - the bloody-minded World War One infantry officer bursting from the trench to lead the charge – to the other – circling the wagons into a laager – Vaughan’s trial-and-error approach was reminiscent of a white-coated lab scientist groping for a solution, but not really sure where to look, or maybe even what he was looking for. During the New Zealand series Vaughan couldn’t close out wins from a controlling position. But that was apparent already in 2005 (remember Edgbaston then?).

Now for some ‘reductive quasi-social-science theorising’, which will please Samir. A report this week on an international management survey showed that, compared to ‘bosses’ in other countries, South Africans are an unusual breed: really ‘gung-ho’ about succeeding when up against the odds in risky foreign ventures, but paradoxically lacking any trust in their own employees. Not a great recipe for success, but Smith (and indeed other SA national leaders) does seem very much a product of his milieu. And if milieu is so determinant, maybe those hoping for a new English dawn this week should also restrain their optimism.

	Kallis seems as unloved amongst fans and ‘fundis’ alike as Sobers is loved and revered © Getty Images

Kallis passed Sobers’ 8032 career runs ages ago, and now he’s above him on the wickets table. So Kallis is officially the top allrounder in cricket history.

I hope I have your attention now. Let’s discuss.

Sobers’ record was 93 tests, 160 innings (21 n.o.), 8032 runs at 57.78 with 26 hundreds, 30 fifties, best 365*. His 235 wickets were at 34.03 runs each, one every 91.9 balls (surprisingly high), best 6/73, 109 catches.

Kallis to date: 122 tests, 205 innings (33 n.o), 9681 runs at 56.28, 30 hundreds, 47 fifties, best 189*, SR 43.9. Plus 236 wickets at 31.25, strike-rate 66.8 balls, best 6/54, and 127 catches. After 93 tests, Kallis had slightly fewer runs than Sobers – 7337 – and a lot fewer wickets – 189, but averaged 56.87 and 31.6.

Strikingly similar records. On the crude test of all-round ability – batting average minus bowling average – Kallis just shades it, 25.03 to 23.75, but they’re both way above all other contenders. Over such long careers, the numbers surely don’t lie. Kallis is as good as Sobers was.

Yet this is never acknowledged – Kallis seems as unloved amongst fans and ‘fundis’ alike as Sobers is loved and revered. His failings are repeated so often they’ve taken on the status of ‘facts’.

a. Cheap runs against minnows: Excluding Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, Kallis’ average drops, but only to 53.6. But look at Sobers through the same lens: excluding India, Pakistan and New Zealand (the minnows of the time), he drops to 53.1. (Even Bradman suffers, averaging ‘only’ 89.8 against England, his only non-minnow opposition.)

b. Shirks his bowling duties: It beats me how people know that Kallis is reluctant to bowl – I’ve never heard anything like this over a stump mike or from a commentator. Somehow the idea took root. For the record, his 21.7 overs per test as 5th bowler doesn’t compare too badly with, say, Flintoff’s 31.3 overs as 3rd or 4th bowler – only 5 overs per innings fewer. And since Kallis has also been SA’s batting mainstay almost from day one, one could argue that bowling him a little less has shown (surprisingly) good resource management by South Africa. Perhaps that is why he was able to bowl 15 overs today at age nearly 33.

c. Bats for himself, not the team, and is slow/boring: I have often been frustrated watching Kallis, especially in ODIs, just wanting him to get on with it. Yet his ODI strike rate is over 70 and one feels he has carried South Africa to victory with a few balls to spare innumerable time. He has 29 ‘Man of the Match’ awards in 274 matches. Ricky Ponting’s strike rate is 80 with 28 ‘Man of the Match’ awards in 301 matches.

But this is the main point: Kallis is not Ponting or Lara or Sehwag. He is not Viv Richards or Barry Richards or indeed Garry Sobers. He came into the South African team when ‘90 for 5’ was our all-too-regular scoreline. In his seventh Test, he had to bat all day against a full-strength Australian attack in Melbourne to save the match. This is how his playing personality was shaped. Kallis took the approach of Rahul ‘The Wall’ Dravid, the path of Steve Waugh, not Mark – eliminating risk, protecting his wicket, allowing others to bat freely by being ‘Mr Reliable’. Calling this selfish is to misunderstand the interplay that cricket imposes between team needs and personal goals. Calling it slow or boring is to ignore one of cricket’s delights, the inch-by-inch battle for domination, as different from the Lara or Sehwag approach as trench warfare is from mounted charges, but no less enthralling. Criticising Kallis for not batting like Lara is like criticising Thelonius Monk for not playing piano like Duke Ellington – it is beside the point.

Kallis’ real problem is that he hasn’t ‘marketed’ himself well. Steve Waugh and Rahul Dravid are rightly revered for their role and contributions – but Kallis is Waugh together with Jason Gillespie in a single player, Dravid and Javagal Srinath rolled into one. He deserves his spot up there with Sobers.

There was a great moment of irony on the radio commentary of the English 20-20 final last night. Kent v Middlesex. Both get to play in the Champions League, if it happens, but the winners also get onto the Stanford bandwagon and various other money-spinning opportunities. Kent needed 16 off the last over and then 4 off the last ball. The commentator – not sure who it was – said, “Here it comes, the most valuable ball in the history of county cricket.”

According to Wisden, Surrey were the first county champions in 1864, so that’s 144 years of history, tens of thousands of first class and limited overs matches, millions of balls bowled. This one was worth more than any other. He continued, “The bowler’s Henderson, the batsman’s Kemp.”

Oops. The most valuable ball ever bowled in England, and both bowler and batsman are South African. The most valuable ball ever bowled in England, and no Englishmen involved.

One of the stories of the England-SA series so far is about the number five batsmen. Bell and Prince both started the series with question marks over their places but both responded decisively. The similarities don’t end there – both are small in stature and apparently quiet in demeanour, both showed great early talent as attacking batsmen but now have different personas and different roles. Until recently, neither was a regular part of their countries’ ODI setup.

Their Test records are remarkably similar. Headingley is Bell’s 41st test, Prince’s 43rd. After the first innings, Bell had played 72 innings (8 not outs) for 2821 runs at 44.07, 8 hundreds, 18 fifties and strike-rate 50.8. Prince’s numbers were 70 innings (10 not outs) for 2634 runs at 43.90, with 9 hundreds, 7 fifties and S/R 42.7.

Curiously, there has been a huge difference against Bangladesh: Prince has only 52 in 5 innings, Bell 227 in 2 (both not out). I don’t believe one should discount performances against the weaker teams, but without Bangladesh, Prince averages 47, Bell 40.5.

Prince must now be regarded as South Africa’s best ever number five. Hansie Cronje’s numbers (111 innings, 3714 runs, average 36.41, strike-rate 44.5, 6 hundreds and 23 fifties) are surprisingly mediocre, and clearly inferior to Prince. When Cronje disappeared, Gary Kirsten moved down the order, since there was no obvious replacement at five. Prince has now surely locked up the position for a long time.

Back in the 50s and 60s, the model for number five was an attacking player, lovely to watch but not entirely reliable to get a really big score. Fitting this mould were Roy McLean (a Lord’s centurion like Prince, 40 tests, 5 hundreds, average just 30) and Colin Bland, the Rhodesian (21 tests, 3 centuries, average a very good 49). Also Tiger Lance and Lee Irvine, brief occupants before isolation.

The archetype was of course Ted Dexter (62 tests, 9 hundreds, 27 fifties, average 48), who visited SA with the International Cavaliers. ‘Cavalier’ was exactly right: Dexter apparently specialised in supremely stylish and quick 70s, whatever the match circumstances.

Prince, in his early years in provincial cricket, was in fact very Dexter-like – he would play really beautifully and score quickly, but after getting to 60 or 70, he would contrive to chuck it away. But by the time he first played for SA in the 2001/02 season, he had become a tough-minded, gritty ‘sticker’, a number three. Nerves kept him from a debut 50 (batting at three), but he was the only batsman who stood up to a rampant attack in an Australian rout.

He was dropped later, but since taking over five after Kirsten’s retirement, he has many times rescued SA from disaster or fought a lone battle against it, as on day 3 at Lord’s in the first Test of the ongoing series. Prince is now the ideal number five, the mould for the position having shifted 180 degrees from Dexter to Steve Waugh (or maybe Allan Border?) Five is now the ‘glue’ of the batting order, the one around whom the rest bat. It was great though to see Prince open up a little with some of his old shots in his Headingley ton.

Ian Bell’s 199 at Lord’s was brilliant too and getting out (after two rain breaks in the 190s) cruel luck. Bell started the Lord’s test with a reputation as ‘a Dexter’, but finished it as a modern number five. Did his failure to reach 200 show continuing mental weakness as some suggested? Maybe. But what about Michael Vaughan? Twice out in the 190s, and twice between 175 and 190, yet to reach 200. Like Prince, Bell’s going to be at five for quite a while.

	ODI matches attract much more crowds than Tests in South Africa © Cricinfo Ltd

Here’s my five cents worth on Samir’s and Michael’s issue of crowds and fans.

I grew up in the 1960s watching cricket at Newlands, sitting on the grass in front of the grandstand [by law only whites, by custom only men], watching three-day inter-provincial matches and the occasional Test. My first Test, England in 1964, was dull as ditch water. On the other hand, Australia in 1967 and 1970 was fantastic. But before 50-over games and before television [introduced into South Africa only in 1976], provincial matches were major events often with full grounds.

Even on the grass, there was a strict etiquette. Most importantly, you never ever moved during an over. If you wanted a cold beverage or go to the loo, you waited till the end of the over. On your return, you parked yourself at the section entrance. Even the ice-cream sellers, the only blacks in our section, picked their way among us only between overs. By mid-afternoon drinks, the Castle Lagers, abetted by the sun, had done their work on the adults on the ‘white’ grass and on the ‘black’ grass just across the sight-screen, and the wisecracks came fast and loud. But not during play: barracking between balls and overs only.

It wasn’t just about form. Us kids also learned cricket, listening to the adults around us talking about the match. We learned to distinguish guff from good sense, and later could participate ourselves.

Today, you could miss a wicket or a great cover drive because the idiot in front of you stands up at the wrong moment. The conversation you overhear is probably on a cellphone, about last night’s party or tonight’s movie. The noise between overs is rock music on the PA system.

Even so, I don’t miss those old days. Watching India play Pakistan simply wasn’t possible then, but they have provided two of my all-time favourite cricket experiences. During the 2003 World Cup, my wife and I sat on the Centurion grass, surrounded by South Asians from Kolkata, London, New York and everywhere between. The singing and shouting was non-stop [but non-threatening too], and the cricket was good, even great - remember that Tendulkar-Shoaib duel? Last year, all of us, even 11-year-old Aisha who ‘hates sport’, had a great afternoon at the World Twenty20 final.

The crowd’s passion and involvement added hugely to the thrill both times. If the price is a little more noise or a sometimes obscured view, it seems to me worth paying. It was the same when Waqar took 5 for nearly nothing to turn defeat against South Africa into victory in 1992, with a crowd of South African Indians on its feet around us chanting ‘Pakistan Zindabad!’ each time he ran in to bowl. And when a packed Wanderers screamed our team to a rout of the Aussies in the ‘Cricket Ethics Memorial Match’, the day after Hansie Cronje admitted his crookedness and resigned.

You’ll notice I’ve only mentioned ODI matches. Tests don’t fill South African grounds these days, and Test crowds are different than they used to be - lots more women, and parents with kids – and also different from ODI matches - fewer young adults. Not too much beer is drunk, and the space on the half-empty stands create a sense of leisure perfect for the long game. Watching a Test match is still a great way to spend a day in Johannesburg, and for your kids to learn the game. If you don’t see a four or don’t hear a snick, there’s a big-screen television replay a moment later. All I miss, really, is being able to walk onto the field at lunch and tea, to play tennis-ball cricket or to stare closely at the pitch and make sage comments about how it should ‘turn’ later in the match.

Like my playing career, my umpiring career has been short and of very modest achievement. For the past 2 or 3 summers, I have occasionally filled in as umpire for my son Samir’s matches for Old Parks club in Johannesburg. This year he played for the under 13Bs and Cs in matches of 20 or 25 overs per side over 4 hours on Saturday mornings. It wasn’t exactly high-pressure, but you do have to follow every ball, and appealing was a big part of the boys’ game (they watch a lot of cricket on TV). Even so, by the end of a morning in the Highveld sun I felt totally knackered, though I’m reasonably fit and healthy (and not too old).

The experience has made me think about what real umpires have to do, how exhausting it must be standing in a Test, 6 hours a day, 5 days in a row, in the much hotter sun of Kingston or Kolkata, with the eyes of the world on your every call.

After the Australia-India Test in Sydney last January, marred by very poor umpiring – decisions and player management – by Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson, I wondered how much of the problem was the result of fatigue. Most umpire-related flare-ups – Darrell Hair, The Oval 2006 (and Adelaide, 1997), Rudi Koertzen, Hobart 2007 – tend to happen late in Test matches, with the game on the line and tensions high.

I suspect that umpire weariness leading to poor judgment was a big factor in these controversies. One of the ‘criometricians’ on the It Figures blog could check if there is a strong correlation between mistaken decisions and the stage of the match, but I bet there is. And it is worth asking Test umpires whether it is a problem.

Players rest while their team is batting. We acclaim the endurance of batsmen who spend 80 or 90 percent of a match on the field, because they have played a long innings. Players learn how and when to ‘switch off’ while on the field. But the poor old umpires are on the field throughout and can never really ‘switch off’.

The solution seems simple: introduce shifts. Have a squad of three or four umpires in a Test match, and rotate them every session out on the field and as 3rd and 4th umpires. Optimally there should be four umpires per match but even with three rotating, umpires would spend only two sessions per day on the field.

Of course Test matches already have four umpires, but only two actually work. The 3rd umpire relaxes in an air-conditioned booth watching the game on television, the 4th brings on the drinks and occasionally a box of balls. Clearly, these guys are pretty underemployed.

Possible objection 1: changing umpires in the middle of an innings will produce inconsistent decisions. But the rules on 'line calls' are very clear. Major league baseball rotates home plate umpires in series between two teams even though the umpire’s view of the strike zone is far more subjective than anything in cricket.

Possible objection 2: there are not enough quality umpires. Perhaps, though some of the worst problems recently have involved those regarded as amongst the very best. In the short-term, a better referral system will help, and over the longer term, more exposure and experience will improve quality. But if short supply is the real constraint, maybe we need to think about Test match umpires from the other – distaff – half of humanity?

	Sport is part of society, and society is shot through with politics © Getty Images

Next on the cricket front is the ICC meeting. Very good arguments for strong ICC action have come from writers in SA, the UK and India. I recommend especially Sambit Bal’s Cricinfo editorial and Andy Bull in the UK Guardian. But both still seem uneasy about ‘bringing politics into sport’. To repeat myself, sport is part of society, and society is shot through with politics. The ICC is part of international relations and this is also inherently political. National political parties and their competition have no place in sport, but sport cannot be quarantined from ‘politics’ in its wider sense of the exercise of power, at either domestic or international levels.

What about the ICC? Prima facie, Zimbabwe Cricket is financially and organisationally bankrupt, since every other public organisation in that country appears to be. The onus should be on ZC to demonstrate its viability, that its institutional capability (not simply its playing ability) still warrants a place at the top table. Does it have income other than the ICC’s handout? Can it mount adequate domestic competitions including at junior levels and home and away tours for the national team as well as lower level? These and similar questions need answers.

If ZC cannot answer satisfactorily, the ICC should act as any responsible regulator would and declare it bankrupt, that is, suspend its membership and institute a process to restore its health. The ICC should appoint a task team to develop a plan – backed by funds – to be implemented once Mugabe no longer has absolute power and the country begins to stabilize.

Cricket’s recovery in Zimbabwe will require externally supervised elections for a new national body. As I have argued, national sports authorities provide public goods and need to be accountable. To be effective, they must be credibly constituted in the eyes of ‘the public’. In 1991, the SA Cricket Union had to close and a new body, the United Cricket Board, established. Whether or not Peter Chingoka or other ZC officials are linked with Mugabe’s reign of destruction, the schisms in Zimbabwean society mean cricket will need a new, properly representative governing body.

These steps are way too far for the ICC at present (though by doing so it would at the same time enhance its own governance). Media reports suggest the BCCI will support the status quo, unless the Indian government forces it to do otherwise. If BCCI’s position is predicated on Zimbabwe’s ICC vote, it is short-sighted. Even the façade of Zimbabwe cricket will crumble soon, forcing India to cut them loose.

The Indian Government will not push BCCI: it won’t jeopardise its major ongoing initiative to build closer economic ties with African countries for the sake of Zimbabwe or cricket.

But I don’t expect that Mugabe will relinquish his hold on power anytime soon – just last week he said only God will remove him - so there will be further opportunity and need to press the ICC to intervene. I hope I’m proved wrong.

	Norman Arendse's veto powers on selection have been removed © Getty Images

This follows the furore in March when CSA President Norman Arendse allegedly (he denies it) forced the replacement of Andre Nel by Charl Langeveldt in the team to tour India. The media and popular reaction then was: We won’t be fielding our best side! Race quotas are all very well lower down, but not for the national team! This ignored the facts. Langeveldt had performed better than Nel in the subcontinent, and Nel was no longer in the Test XI anyway. He had been replaced by Morne Morkel, so the argument was actually about the reserve seamer spot.

The new guidelines have provoked a sigh of relief, together with moans over some of the recommendations: Politics has not been fully exorcised from cricket!

Affirmative action invariably provokes illogical arguments and the cricket quota debate is no exception. Racial transformation targets – percentage shares with deadline dates – are now fully accepted by SA business, covering ownership, management, skilled labour force, purchases of goods and services and even customers. By and large, formerly white corporations have recognised the necessity of transforming and even its benefits. But far from being voluntary, it needed pressure and regulation to chivvy corporate foot-draggers. Government contracts depend on meeting BEE targets, big shareholders demand change, and legislated codes are in place.

Cricket boardrooms and executive offices are transformed, as evidenced by Arendse, Ray Mali et al., though there is the odd disgruntled (Ray) White. The national team has included black players on merit for years. So why the recent fuss?

I think it stems from a deep contradiction within national sports bodies. Fans following their sport enjoy what we economists call a ‘pure public good’ – all can be fans together and no aspiring fan can be excluded. Fans without the admission fee maybe can’t watch their sport ‘live’, but can be fans nonetheless. Public goods are best supplied by a single provider, usually government representing ‘the public’. Think of national defence, another public good.

National sports organisations are usually monopolies, but aren’t publicly accountable like government agencies or corporations listed on stock exchanges. They are private in character – non-transparent and self-regulating – if not privately-owned. This helps them enormously to evade the consequences of poor performance, limit players’ freedom of movement, and vigorously protect their monopoly power (I’ll write about IPL vs ICL soon).

But the fans have neither ‘exit’ nor ‘voice’ options to register their disapproval. They cannot switch to a market competitor nor hold ‘their’ sports organisations to account to force a change of behaviour. They carry all the risk: if the team does badly, they suffer, but they can’t change teams.

Back to Arendse, who was at worst ham-fistedly forcing employees (the selectors) to carry out company policy. His goal, if not his method, was that of any manager. The hostile reaction was in response to his own lack of transparent accountability. The real problem is deficient corporate governance, affirmative action is simply the context for the fight. So don’t expect the new guidelines to sort things out.

Can anything be done to improve accountability? Perhaps, though as I said, the problem is at the heart of national sports organisations. But I’m out of space, so I’ll have to come back to it another time.

I am writing this on June 16th, Youth Day in South Africa but better remembered, by those of us old enough, as Soweto Day. Thirty-two years ago, schoolchildren began to protest in Soweto township and were met by police bullets, a landmark moment in the resistance which led to our liberation in 1994.

An icon of that struggle, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, gave the Spirit of Cricket lecture at Lord’s last week. More than anyone else, Tutu has been our post-apartheid moral conscience. A cricket fan since his teens, he is the first fan to be asked to give the annual lecture. Since this is a fans’ blog, it seems entirely appropriate for this debut piece to be a homage to him.

The headlines after the lecture focused on Tutu’s support for a cricket boycott of Zimbabwe, though his lecture was not explicit about this. Nonetheless he is right, even if official South Africa – and the ICC - disagree. Our president is notorious for insisting on ‘quiet diplomacy’. Our cricket board sent SA and SA ‘A’ teams to Zimbabwe last August, and included Zimbabwe in our domestic competitions last summer, as used to happen in the 1970s when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia.

The old anti-apartheid slogan ‘No normal sport in an abnormal society’ applies. Six-digit inflation? People dying of starvation? A ruling party that threatens to take up arms if it loses an election? Zimbabwe is an abnormal society, a society at war with itself.

Neither is Zimbabwe’s sport ‘normal’. Read the poignant piece on Zimbabwean cricketers resorting to illegal and desperate means of survival because inflation has dissolved their salaries, or the story of the SA ‘A’ team in Bulawayo last year – no food in their hotel, they went to get dinner at a chicken fast-food outlet. But the restaurant had no chicken, or anything else to eat.

There is an irrefutable moral case for a cricket boycott. Is there a political case too? Will it make a difference? Not directly. Unlike white South Africa, neither Mugabe nor his supporters seem to care much about cricket, sport generally, or their image in the West. Only a serious economic boycott in which South Africa participates will really impact on Zimbabwe. But the lesson from ending apartheid is that this needs an international social movement to force the hand of reluctant political leaders who don’t really want change – like Margaret Thatcher then and Mbeki now. A cricket boycott will help build this social movement, even though it is very late to be starting.

Tutu’s main concern was a much deeper disagreement with Thatcher, who famously denied the existence of ‘society’ and thought only in terms of ‘the individual’. Tutu argued that humankind is in essence a social being: the individual does not exist outside society. For him cricket epitomises this interdependence: more than most other games, it is a series of struggles between individuals which have meaning only in the context of the wider struggle between their teams and are only resolved with the help of their teams. Batsman and bowler always play for both themselves and their teams.

Cricket is shaped by the same economic, political and social forces which impact on the rest of society. Having enjoyed the Warner Stand at Lord’s in the 60s while a student in England, Tutu would have been forced to sit in a rudimentary ‘non-white’ enclosure at the Wanderers after his return home. What a way to be reminded that even if the cricket world – players and administrators – tries to keep the real world at bay, it cannot succeed, if only because its fans are necessarily part of that real world.

Cricket is facing big challenges which forcibly remind us that it is not just a game, from affirmative action to failed states, from the power of money to the tension between technological progress and social organisation (aka the third umpire). In my contributions to this blog, I plan to take up these issues while also writing about cricket on the field, like why Jacques Kallis is an all-time great, and what it feels like when South Africa beat England (hopefully) and Australia (really hopefully).