Dangerous agendas cloud the path to progress

● For SA cricket, it’s the worst of times. Or is it? Yes. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Newspapers being the physical things they are, the space allocated for this column isn’t nearly big enough to list all the reasons why only people at least 90 years old could remember a time when SA’s men’s Test team have been as properly outplayed as they were in India these past few weeks.

If you’re 90 and cricket-minded, as well as still of sound mind, you might recall dear old Herby Wade’s side being smacked 4-0 in a five-match rubber by Vic Richardson’s marauding Australians in 1935-36.

Why is that the benchmark? Because it’s the last time, before the series in

India, SA have crashed by an innings in consecutive matches. There’s a lot more evidence besides, measured from the start of readmission, to prove that they hit rock bottom against Virat Kohli’s juggernaut of a team.

But, in this era of fake news, opinion has elevated itself to the level of fact. So we are expected to take seriously nonsense like, “It’s not that bad …” and “Sport works in cycles …”, and, wrongest of all, “We can’t blame Cricket South Africa (CSA) for this …”.

The correct responses to the above are, unarguably, “It is”, “Not like this”, and “Like hell we can’t”.

We need to tread warily amid the dangerous agendas that have stolen into the narrative, and that don’t care much for the truth. And hold them up, mercilessly, to the withering light of proper scrutiny.

They are bloody agents who want to convince us that what isn’t nearly good enough is indeed good enough

Because the people who are propagating this poison aren’t doing so in good faith. They are bloody agents in the service of those who want to convince us that what isn’t nearly good enough is indeed good enough; that right and wrong aren’t as distinguishable as we’ve been led to believe.

Swallow that and you’re on your way to swallowing that it’s OK that nobody — including international players — cares about the domestic structures, that it’s fine if the job of too many people in cricket is simply to have their job, and that despite all signs to the contrary, not least in financial, governance and player relations terms, CSA act in the best interests of the game.

At play here is the same kind of unthinking that would have us accept that we should trust in a government that is efficient only when it is reaping our taxes, which we never see put to good use. Do so and you might also respect an opposition party that reacts to losing voter support to a right-wing rabble by reinventing itself as, wouldn’t you know it, a right-wing rabble.

If that’s a touch higher grade for the sport section on a sleepy Sunday, pretend you’re a frog in a pot of water that seems to be warming, gradually but steadily …

These are difficult times to be South African in all sorts of senses, cricket not excepted. Teams will lose, sometimes badly — especially when their opponents are as good as India are undoubtedly. But that’s not why SA were so soundly beaten. Neither is Faf du Plessis losing all three tosses in India to blame. Three of SA’s five victories there have been achieved after they lost the toss and fielded first, two of them by an innings.

That nobody thought twice about the optics of reducing Temba Bavuma to a mascot by wheeling him out at the toss in Ranchi tells us how badly SA have lost their way. Bavuma is a lightning rod for criticism from dog-whistling racists, even when — or especially when — he performs. So why expose him to their ridicule in a clumsy, tone deaf stunt?

These are the worst of times for cricket in our country, or at least for the time most of us have been alive. That must be our point of departure if we want to help take the game forward.

If anyone tells you otherwise, they’re not wondering why the water is getting warmer. They’re lying.