The Ashes juggernaut has important lessons for SA

● So, Faf, what are your thoughts on the xenophobia that’s slitting our society’s throat? Or the evil we visit on women for being women? Or that men just don’t get the damn straight truth that the problem starts and ends with them?

People of Faf du Plessis’s influence should be asked those questions. Alas, reality and sport don’t mix.

But it’s not all disappointing.

Here’s David Gower on the BBC interviewing the current holder of his old job: “Most of the news is about politics, about Brexit, about the country in turmoil. Do you realise you are the antidote to all this?”

Joe Root rummaged through his head for his grown-up thought. It seems he failed to locate it. So he said: “It’s nice to see Test cricket painted in such a light, isn’t it? Especially in England off the back of a fantastic summer, really.”

Then he waxed flaccidly about the “phenomenal” World Cup and the “fantastic” win at Headingley.

Gower was undeterred: “Going back to the original question, the comparison with ’81 has already been made many a time; when my long-serving friend and colleague Mr Botham made a name for himself. That was in the background of political turmoil and national unrest.

That made history for all sorts of reasons. Are you aware of that social responsibility as well?”

Root could have referenced 1981’s Brixton Riots, which involved 5,000 angry people, or the deaths of 10 IRA hunger strikers in prison, or the ranks of the unemployed growing almost as fast as Margaret Thatcher’s unpopularity.

Instead he said: “Umm … I think

Ah, cricket; lovely cricket. It was Gower’s turn to chuckle, almost in defeat

sometimes you do forget about it slightly. But it’s just amazing how powerful sport can be sometimes, to see cricket being viewed in such a positive light.”

Then he wafted into flummery about Ben Stokes. The closest Root came to sounding like he knew of a world in which he didn’t play cricket for a living was when he described Jofra Archer’s languid, lethal bouncer as “almost like the bowler version of how you used to bat”.

Ah, cricket; lovely cricket. It was Gower’s turn to chuckle, almost in defeat, and say: “Very kind of you.”

Coverage of the Ashes juggernaut cannot be confined to the game. So the search for intelligence plumbs down far enough to disturb dingbats like Shane Warne, who said: “You’ve made the [Brexit] decision; it’s done. Get on with it.

“All this procrastinating about all this stuff. Just get on with it. Boris is good, everyone’s great. Get on with it. It’s a great country. Get on with it.”

Graham Gooch got on with it unbidden, hatching a metaphor as innovative as his baseball backlift: “England, as yet, have failed to work out Steve Smith. Bit like Boris Johnson can’t work out this Brexit. I’m not sure which is more difficult.”

Stokes was on 10 front pages the day after his sacredly profane innings at Headingley. And plenty of space remained for what really mattered. There’s a lesson in that, Mzansi.

Learn it.