Suspended:

SA’s Kagiso Rabada dives off his bowling at St George’s Park against Australia. Rabada has been banned for the last two Tests of SA’s series against Australia‚ the International Cricket Council said on Monday.

Man of the match and suspended for the rest of the series. Kagiso Rabada is one of the least nasty, least mean players to have been hit so hard by the International Cricket Council’s (ICC’s) excessively punitive code of conduct, in which it takes two years for a player to have the demerit points erased.

Crimes of passion are different on the sports field and should be far more easily forgiven. Players are asked to push themselves to breaking point for their team-mates and their countries and, when they do break, they are banned.

Which can be fair enough, but that’s where it should end.

The idea that an inevitable flare-up as a result of the intensity of emotion and physical exertion required to play Test cricket should remain on a player’s record for two years is clearly farcical.

It has resulted in the deeply distasteful spectre of teams deliberately “targeting” key members of the opposition to get them suspended.

Cricket’s administrators have created a rotten situation with the well-intentioned but ill-considered demerit points system in which passionate players on the brink of a suspension become targets for the opposition.

Steve Smith admitted before the series began that his team were aware of Rabada’s predicament and that they would be looking to get him “fired up” to induce another breach that could result in him missing a game or two.

Faf du Plessis said the same about David Warner after his nasty attempt to brawl with Quinton de Kock at Kingsmead last week.

When Rabada trapped Smith leg before wicket in the first innings, the bowler maintained his line as he ran towards his team-mates to celebrate. Smith, too, maintained his line as he walked towards his partner to discuss a possible review.

It is indisputably true from his eye movement that Smith could see the potential contact between the players coming and gestured immediately to the umpire with his shoulder when it did. He had his man. He’d got him.

Australia’s cricketers have long adopted a “whatever it takes” approach to winning, but inducing a foul to have a rival player ejected from a series is a new take.

The players don’t make the rules, of course, they simply bend them to advantage.

Rabada’s second charge in the Test match was a level-one offence for the “send off” he gave Warner after bowling him in the second innings. No player has yet successfully appealed against the result of an ICC disciplinary result so, as Rabada said after Monday’s serieslevelling victory: “Things don’t look good”.

It would take no more than a modest lawyer, however, to successfully contend that Rabada’s clenched-fist celebration during which he screamed “Yes!” three times in close proximity to the departing batsman could not be classified as a “send off”.

To be so it would surely have required either words other than “yes” or gestures towards the pavilion.

The charge against him should have been “overly passionate celebration”.

But that wouldn’t be a good look for a game trying to remain relevant and appealing.

Rabada was contrite about “letting myself and my teammates down”, but said he wouldn’t change the way he expressed himself.

“I’ll just do it a lot further away from the batsman in future,” he said.

He also said he had appealed against the charge because “I know I didn’t do it on purpose. I honestly didn’t even feel any contact, I was so pumped up.”

He made the point that he did not appeal against his previous one-Test ban after a salty send-off for England’s Ben Stokes because “I knew I had done it”.

Du Plessis was concerned about the “lack of consistency” among officials when it came to interpreting player behaviour.

He said Rabada and Smith “touching shirts” and Warner’s behaviour in the stairwell at Kingsmead — “which was far more aggressive” — could not be regarded as the same.

Yet they were both, officially, level-two offences.

In the absence of Rabada the rest of the attack, and presumably a recalled Morné Morkel, will have to raise their performances by at least 10% each while the batsmen cannot continue relying so heavily on AB de Villiers, even though he is batting better than ever.

This was a Test victory dominated by two brilliant individuals. Now the Proteas only have one of them.