Watch any team you like, as long as it’s Pakistan

IF it’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday, it must be Pakistan. That’s right, sports lovers, the fellas you paid good money to see in SA last season and have been watching on the box for the past month are back. Yes, really — them. Again. The Proteas have played 32 matches across all formats since February. In 20 of them, Pakistan have been their opponents. That’s 62.5% of all SA’s games in the past eight months against the same team. Good thing they seem to like each other.

And is it any wonder that when Misbah-ul-Haq attends press conferences his eyes light up with recognition and he waves a hello at the ever-more familiar faces among the South African hacks?

But wait. There’s more. On Wednesday, SA will play the first match of their home summer, a T20 at the Wanderers. They will indeed be up against those other guys in green, who will play another T20 and three one-day internationals before they leave our shores, hopefully not to return until Gerald Majola is running the International Cricket Council (ICC).

What, some of us will ask, is Cricket SA (CSA) to do if those arrogant Indians want to get precious about chief executives and tour itineraries and behave like they own cricket? (which, of course, they do).

Surely, this argument goes, a schedule filled with yet more matches against Pakistan is better than no schedule at all? So, big ups to CSA for making a plan.

Big ups CSA’s backside. They have known since February that the Board of Control for Cricket in India, world cricket’s paymasters, are annoyed with them. They did nothing to remedy the situation. Instead, they did all the wrong things — including look for a fight with the Indians. Predictably, they lost. Now, they look stupid and inept, and no amount of paper can cover those cracks.

It says a great deal about how low CSA have sunk, that administrators are talking openly about how “we wouldn’t be in this mess if Majola was still in charge; he knew how to deal with the Indians”. He did. He also broke the law and was duly fired as CSA’s chief executive. Do we prefer proven lawbreakers making big decisions ahead of people doing their jobs properly?

Evidence that this sorry lot are not doing their jobs is to be found in the relief among the suits that CSA will lose “only” R3-million of what they should have been paid by their one-day and T20 sponsors this season.

If India had agreed to the itinerary that CSA released in July, those sponsors would have coughed up R16-million. The Pakistan tour means they will now pay R13-million. Phew! Only R3-million in the dwang on that score, then.

Of course R3-million gone is better than R16-million — but isn’t part of CSA’s job to make money, not to minimise losses?

And what might Pakistan get out of another series against SA? Game time, granted. But, given CSA’s questionable governance record, how can we be sure the South Africans’ support is not for sale at ICC board meetings? Damn straight answer? We can’t.