The Spin | South African cricket’s Faustian pact keeps the lights on, but at a price

The SA20 franchise tournament is taking precedence over the Test team and a rich red-ball history is now in danger

So this is how it ends. Not only with a whimper and the impotent shrugging of shoulders, but under thick globules of sponsored maximums, reflective uniforms and suffocating excess. Like geese with bloated livers we’ve had a thing we love stuffed down our throats so that there’s no room for nourishment. If this is indeed how South African Test cricket dies then let’s be quick about it.

Cricket’s landscape would be unrecognisable without South Africans. Not only have the Proteas provided some of the greatest exponents of the craft, but exports and expats have shaped the destinies of other nations as well. This is no bit-part player shuffling off the periphery. This is akin to a gigantic ice shelf collapsing into the Southern Ocean.