What an absorbing game of cricket. A real game of proper cricket, compared with the trash of T20 Tonk/Hit and Run which is akin to WWF Wrestling, or Drag Racing at Tarlton.

The point is that both WWF Wrestling and Drag Racing at Tarlton have their place in the entertainment arena for people seeking instant fake gratification(don’t we all at times), but T20 is no more ‘cricket’ than there is really a man on the moon. The tragedy is that 7500 people turn up on a sunny Saturday to watch an absorbing, teriffic day of test criicket and about 15000, or more, will pour into Centurion and wherever the T20 Tonks are scheduled to take place. Test cricket in South Africa is a dying spectacle. How sad; at the expense of money and flashy entertainment for people who cant concentrate for more than 2 minutes without demanding a ‘bash’.

I would say that if De Kock had not committedd batting Hari Kiri (the youngster MUST learn very quickly that test cricket is not one day cricket ), the South Africans would have shaded the honours.

The stupid stroke Smith played and the deadly ball which trapped the out of form Amla, confirmed that even on a fairly lifeless pitch, brains(or lack of cricket brains) and a killer ball bowled, can still make the difference when a clever captain and a lethal quickie play against a thick cricket captain and an out of form top class batsman.

Now it is all up to the brilliant A.B De Villiers and a not very convincing J.P Duminy to construct an innings which yields at least 330 to 350. The chances of a draw ,if this materialises, are strong.

Can Smith get his head right? No eveidence of this has materialised sofar in this series. Clarke has comprehensively out witted him on this tour, but we all know Smith is a doughty fighter. He can grit it out and regain some confidence, but until such time the psychological ascendancy lies with Clarke and his quickies at the beginning of the South African innings. Elgar batted so well until he lost his cool.

The Australians still have to make the runs; anything over 350 would be a formidable total to challenge, with the prospect of batting last.

Simoc, why don’t you show us how it should be done? Or are you just a destructive nobodywho can hurl epithets but cant string a constructive piece together for love or money?

Michael Clarke has been the best test batsman in world cricket in the last five years, alongside Sangakara,Hashim Amla and A.B De Villiers, who is finally evolving into the best of the lot.

Pup and A.B are both superb strokemakers and when in form, worth travelling miles to watch. Amla and Sangakara are both elegant and possess fantastic concentration.

Much will depend on Clarke and Rogers in the three test series in South Africa, as much will rest on the shoulders of Amla, A.B and Smith for the South Africans.

By his high standards, Clarke needs to find form quickly. He has not fared that well in South Africa(by his standards), and for South Africa, Amla needs to find his form. Altogether, an intriguing batting conundrum awaits us.

Talk about arrogance !

As Biltongbek points out Australia trail in recent series. If South Africa is a happy hunting ground for Australia, so is Australia for the South Africans,

We all look forward to a hard fought series,. May the best team win.

I congratulate you Biltongbek on your excellent piece on the proteas. Your knowledge of cricket is not shabby, next to your sound ‘kennis van rugby’.

I hope stodgy ‘old’ Huddie and his cohorts have the balls to pick De Kock NOW….. not later. He is a burgeoning talent which must be developed. Imagine if the Idians (my descriptions of the BICC) AND THEIR SELECTORS HAD BEEN PUSSY CAT SCARED WHEN Sachin WAS 16!

Our excessively conservative selectors held back the budding genius of Barry Richards in 1967…. idiots! Thank the cricket gods that they blooded Mike Proctor in 1967. Lee Irvine should have been brought in as well. Dumbrill was so inept that an extra batsman would have added to the SA lineup.

If the colour card does not rear its ugly head, Kyle Abbott must get the nod. Hendricks is second in line if the cry that experience counts. Abbott has been there and done it.
Roll on the series… it could be the last real test series we play in for a very long time… if not forever in cricket terms

Good post Harry and Biltongbek.

Arme ou Jake the Snake sits in Durbs by the sea when his missus wants to be on the wine farm, Avontuur, and Jake( bloody good coach) should be sorting out the Stormers, the franchise with more burst sphincters in charge than all the other South African franchises put together.

Biltongbek, as always, you are spot on.

One can understand Juan Smith’s ‘mission’ to make money in France to make up for his farming setbacks and years of expensive surgery and financial drought, but what a prime clot Matfield has become.

Ever since he retired, he has made a complete mess of things. He was quite the worst ‘rugby guru’ any of us have heard on TV, nad that is saying something in the face of some experts at bungling their broadcasts. Because a man had been a good rugby player, does not mean he will be a good broadcaster. Our screens are littered with men who mangle and murder the English language. Matfiled was shocking in English and pretty poor in Afrikaans.

Now, the great comeback. Jake White will confirm that Matfield is not the brightest ‘ouk’ on the block. He was a lineout genius and a very good rugby player. Stay away Victor, you are a disruptive influence and too obsessed with your self to contribute to the development of the Bok squad.

You are spot on Biltongbek.

At least Juan is playing solid rugby for Tou;on. Victor has made an ass of himself since retiring. Heyneke is so attached to his past with the Blue Bulls that he will pick Victor and Pierre Slapgat Spies if they can only(just) run on to the paddock.

Excellent article, with one glaring misrepresentation. David Warner couldn’t conjure up 500 coherent words let alone 500 pithy insults; maybe 6 such insults 500 times over?

What a bent Loola we have on our hands !

Are you coveniently forgetting the disgraceful behaviour of thousands of lager louts inside and outside British pubs?

KP has so often behaved like a low class lager lout that it is easy to develop a hearty dislike for the man.

He has undoubtably been a test batsman who could tear the opposition to shreds, and still has the talent to do so; but it his attitude which is wrecking his reputation as a cricketer. He has never been a well liked individual off the field, and now the laziness to apply himself when the chips are down, to put the team first, and his arrogance, have all caught up with him.

Cricket is a tough game at the test level and it appears as if KP lacks the bottle for the battle. Very few cricket followers will feel any sympathy for him.

Oh really! What a magnificently delusional statement.

To be the best rugby team in the world any team needs to win consistently, not just a one off flash in the pan, or at the 4 yearly Biggest Lottery in the World called RWC.

Will you burn your strange jacket if the All Blacks keep up a high rate of winning; and playing a brand of rugby second to none?

Aaron, well said. (# bok fan)is conveniently blind to the hard fact that in the second half of the Ellis Park epic, the All Blacks scored 31 points to the 12 of the Springboks,playing with 14 men at the crucial stage at the tail end of this great test match; plus with ALL the odds of too much travel in the fortnight before the game to be too confident about, the home ground advantage of Fortress Ellis Park(an unhappy hunting ground for the All Blacks), and a Springbok team which threw the kitchen sink at them for 50-55 minutes.

Great teams win tough games in the last quarter quite regularly. The 1951/52 Boks did it a few times;the underrated 1981 Bok side ‘won’ the crucial test at Eden Park against overwhelming odds in the last 10 minutes, only to robbed blind by a bent(in more ways than one) Welshman called Clive Norling.

The harsh lesson, and the great beauty of rugby is that ‘it aint over until the fat lady sings. Ask the Irish?

A few years back one of my sporting heroes, John Kirwan, came out of the ‘depression closet’, so to speak, and produced an inspirational series of TV flights to get across to youngsters that mental illness in the form of acute clinical depression is not something which . a. cannot be successfully treated, just like any other ilness can be treated, and, b. depression is not something to be ashamed of; it happens to a heck of a lot of people.

Trott deserves all the support he can get, and it highlights the tremendous pressure applied to modern professional sportsmen.

Shag Hansen has done a very good job, with top notch help from his support personnel, in deveoping the current All Black squad to the point where they are still unquestionably the best outfit in world rugby.

There are quite a few posers attached to the squad in the next two years.

It appears doubtful that DC will make it.His body is breaking down too often for comfort. Best flyhalf I have seen in over 60 years of following rugby, but time catches up with everybody; no exceptions.

Richie has changed his game to suit a more Number 6 style than tearaway Number 7. Still a teriffic player.

If Jerome Kaino can regain his 2011 form he will be a shoo in, with Steven Latua and young Ardie Savea as potential backup.

Who is the young Maori 8th man? Liam somebody; he looks like a good prospect.

Read remains imperious and vital to the ABs

Will the brains of the backline outside of halves remain fit and fired up? Conrad Smith is a very clever, effective player, and damned hard to replace.

Hooker is a real problem. Horey finished and Mealamu reaching pensionable age; Coles very ordinary at test level. Coltman looks promising.

Props need to step up. The Poms bashed them around far too easily;same with Whitelock and Retallick.

ABs still have a special ability to soak up pressure and step up a gear, but Poms, Springboks and French a danger in the bloody RWC Lottery.

Harry Jones, you hit the proverbial nail on the head. Meyer has a great weakness in selection inasmuch he dithers.

One moment he will make a bold decision; Etzebeth two years ago, Willie Le Roux more recently(I am talking about players he puts on the field regularly). Then, he appears to catch a ‘groot skrik’ and reverts to Blue Bull laager mentality or just plain weird nonsense; choosing a scrumhalf like Schreuder to tag along with the squad is ridiculous. Janno Vermaak had to be flown to Paris anyway. Why take Schreuder who is not remotely international class, in the first place? Imagine how McLeod-Henderson must feel after, admittedly behind a rampant Sharks pack, dominating proceedings in the Currie Cup final. If he had been a Blou Bulletjie, he would have been on tour .

As for the considerable talent of Pieter Labuschagne, Meyer has a blind spot; agreed Arno Botha is special and fit and fired up is a great prospect. Some loose forwards have a feel for where the ball will be and where they should be. Arno Botha is one of them, and I believe that Pieter Labuschagne has that rare extra ability as well.

In the current Bok squad, Flouw has it in spades. Alberts does not… emphatically. Francois Louw should be groomed now to be the next Bok captain

Toomuch for me, you gave me a good laugh with your absurd comment as to the retort that the All Blacks play NEGATIVE rugby! Who scored three delightful backline tries? Not the dull, boring English, who scored one messy try after about five minutes of dull as ditchwater crap on the All Blacks tryline.

Credit where credit is due, the English are doing their traditional once a decade thing; their forwards are moulding into a formidable unit which on home soil will be a real contender in 2015 at Fortress Swing Low Bloody Chariots to win the RWC. The reason is simple; the grossly overhyped RWC is a lottery in which the home team has a massive advantage if they have a half decent team. and a deadly kicker. and England have that in that prat Farrell, combined with a really effective pack of forwards.

Since 1991 the English have established a brand of rugby which when they have an effective pack and a deadly kicker at flyhalf is as entertaining as having dysentry for a month, but tragically effective in winning big competitions(RWC 2003)

The All Blacks, on the other side of the planet, literally, and in rugby terms, have set the benchmark of rugby at its most entertaining and attractive, without that ghastly, misplaced slave dirge and the arrogance of the English media. Prat Farrell sums up what we Southern Hemisphere colonials detest about English rugby(not England and Englishmen); arrogance without any grace. Yes, the little brat can kick a rugby ball, but he is as bad at a high level of rugby as Morne Steyn as a real footballer.

Thank the rugby gods that the All Blacks beat the Rostbifs at Twickenham and hats off to the very good English pack and Mike Brown

What a pathetic crack, but not surprising from a supporter of a team which has a record of 3 wins, 1 draw and 14 losses against the All Blacks since their humiliating annihilation by New Zealand at Newlands, Cape Town, in the 1995 RWC.

This same team once went 15 months during the latter part of the amateur era without scoring a single try in numerous internationals

My team, the Springboks, has had some pretty poor spells and put up some shoddy performances since readmission, but my reaction has been that until we can match the All Blacks for skill and consistency, acknowledgement of their class as consistently the best rugby team in the world, is axiomatic. The odd victory over the New Zealanders is pleasurable, and back in 2009 we even managed three victories in one year.

One swallow a summer doth not make, arrogant Rostbif. Rather go and practice a funeral dirge instead of that slave song you so inappropriately chant at Fortress Twickenham. A dash of humility from people like you is unlikely. How sad for you.

Biltongbek, you make an interesting point when you confirm our inability to play well in Europe in November.

Do you think that it is because our players are so stuffed from too much rugby, or is it the selections our coaches have made on the EOTYT to the U.K and sometimes France; or a combination of a number of factors?

Last year, even the All Blacks looked jaded and listless when an ordinary England side drilled them at Twickenham, but usually they rise to the occasion and thump the home unions. They don’t always look so good against the French, but then we all know, predicting how the French will play is as crazy as predicting what next Malema will say in public.

One thing for sure, we seem to quickly forget that although the Springboks played some brilliant rugby at Ellis Park recently in the much lauded ‘test of the decade’, and rightly so, the Boks conceded 31 points in the last hour of the game, and scored 12. They did this at Fortress Ellis Park, playing at home, at altitude, against a squad which had flown all over the globe to play at Ellis Park.

It begs the question; are our players, particularly our forwards, fit enough, lean enough, and toned for high pace test rugby, not gym statistics. Our behemoths(Jannie Du Plessis, Fat Alberts… in particular… cannot play for 80 minutes and Du Plessis looks pathetic when he tries to tackle, but then no worse than Moffie Morne’s collar grabbing, and missing, his opponents like clockwork.

The selection of our team for the test aginst Wales will be fascinating.Brave of Meyer to opt for the roof to be open.

What absolute unmiitigated drivel!

Owens(not Owen, you ignorant rugby retard) did a good job, despite your half eye bias.

The Springboks simply ran out of puff(being massive is not the key to modern rugby) according to a number of experts in South Africa. We were outplayed despite our massive effort, against a team which had to travel to the Argentine, then dash to Jozi, play in our favourite All Black killer stadium, at altitude, and despite a magnificent effort from the Boks, still won comfortably.

No wonder our record against them since 1992 is so poor. We have the talent to be number one, not the perennial bridesmaid, but we have to face the fact that brawn and bulk is not he answer; pace,brains and supreme fitness, plus player management is what we need more than lumbering monsters who cant play 80 minutes.

Good assessment of the 2013 Wallabies at Twickenham. Folau is a special player, and Moore hardly ever lets his team down. Horwill will get back to being a world class player and a damn good captain, given the right platform.

Unbelievable how Genia has slipped from being a really good international scrumhalf to being a nervous ninny. Perhaps The Link is not a good link? Mowen is way out of his depth as a player and a captain; not his fault; Mc Kenzie is a bumbling clot. Quo Vadis Robbie? You are well rid of the dumb, prejudiced Wallaby hierarchy.

As for the sad comparison between the truly great 1991 Wallabies and most of the current crop, there must have been a mass exodus of players to rules or horseracing.

The current sorry crop of so called English players are pathetic next to the dull, uninspiring but effective 1991 ‘Rostbifs.’ None of us who love rugby will ever forget how the England team tried ever so laughably to run the ball against an outstanding Wallaby team which looked very jaded and outof puff on the day. Rob Andrew could not even spell,’flair/ move the ball to the wings quickly/let the ball do the work.

As much as the blasted RWC is a lottery, the 1991 Wallabies were the best in the world by a clear margin. So sad to see the 2013 Wallabies floundering in the ditch of international rugby. Rugby needs a good Wallaby team,

Rugby, outside the All Blacks and the Springboks, has slid down the scale of excellence and commitment

What apoor rugby test match ! Both teams were lacklustre and singularlyy unimpressive in execution. To add to the low standard of the play, Clancy was his usual pedantic, inefficient self.

Not worth commenting on. Folau looked to be the only player in either side who could make the All Black team.

Mackaveli

Paul Rees has done this before. Some of the English rugby writers are so negative and insecure about the consistent beatings their ‘Rosbifs’ take at the hands of the Southern Hemisphere teams at the end of the year, when by rights the Southern Hemisphere teams are shagged out by almost eleven months of relentless rugby, and are at their most vulnerable, that they try, rather pathetically, to write them off as ‘friendlies.’

Ask the home nation and French coaches if they do not attach massive significance to beating the All Blacks, Springboks and Wallabies.
Witness the almost hysterical reaction from the ‘Rosbif’ supporters when their team (deservedly) beat the All Blacks last year at
Twickenham; the ridiculous sound of a balck American slave song rang out endlessly. The English were of course hugely influential and participarory in the slave trade. Ironic that they now sing ‘Swing low sweet chariot.’ Perhaps they should practice, ‘We shall
overcome’ for the precious, rare occasions when they win one or more of the EOTYT ‘friendlies.

Excellent piece, Biltongbek.

I looked at the full team sheet of Toulonnais recently, and counted at most 6 French players out of the full squad to play Toulouse; and lose they did.

How can the French national team fulfil their undoubted potential if the Top 14 Competition is riddled with classy foreigners? The national team must suffer accordingly, and even more than the U.K national sides, the French franchises care little about ‘centralising the focus’ on the national squad. The French national team often plays its best rugby when they tour (if at, or close to, full strength)or at the RWC .

Wales do well in the 6 Nations because they are well coached and make maximum use of their very good players. Scotland will always battle because of a lack of player depth, but perform minor miracles at Murrayfield. Ireland are sometimes very good, but again the pull of franchise duties in England and elsewhere, particularly France, impacts on their national squad.They also do not enjoy big player depth.

England, with all their players and money, are the great under performers in world rugby. Even if they win the lottery of RWC in 2015, it wont prove much, as they consistently underperform against the Southern Hemisphere teams. The deserved win last year at Twickenham against the All Blacks was a one off in about 20 tests in recent times. Not very impressive from the rugby nation with more players and money than any other?

The undoubted strength of the All Blacks is centralised contracting, strong domestic competitions(not just the ITM Championship), the ruthless honing of player skills in the Super 15,an almost fanatical commitment to the Silver Fern, the tremendous natural athleticism of the Polynesians and Melanesians who qualify to play for the All Blacks, little or no internecine squabbling between their domestic franchises (All for the All Blacks), and a coaching system second to none in world rugby

The Springboks operate from a considerable talent pool, which, despite internecine squabbling between its domestic unions at board level, absurd political interference, some abysmal coaching, and a studied lack of utilising the best rugby brains in the country, is arguably the second bset rugby nation in the world.

The Aussies; well, they appear to have gone from very smart to splintered, but on the slow, painful way back to being one of the top rugby nations. The accent on horseracing, Footy, cricket, league, leaving a small, elite minority to play rugby, means that the Wallabies have to bat clever, not crude. They will be back.

The Southern Hemisphere will lose some on the EOTYT money mission, but not many.

The Irish clubs like Leinster, Munster and to a lesser extent Ulster, have batted way above their weight in the Heineken Cup