Strange days indeed continue in PE

That the SBW mask morons should drag into this idiocy a woman who no doubt has enough male stupidity in her life is vile and disgusting.

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE at St George’s Park

THE fact that this story has pushed onto an inside page our analysis of the cricket played on day two of the second test between South Africa and Australia at St George’s Park on Saturday tells you this is no ordinary match in no ordinary series.

Things will get more extraordinary if Kagiso Rabada is banned, as seems likely, for the rest of the rubber at a hearing on Sunday evening for the moment of male madness in which his and Steve Smith’s shoulders collided, seemingly malevolently, after he dismissed Australia’s captain on Friday.

But we should begin not on the field but in the sun-scarred green plastic seats of the western grandstand.

“We want the band! We want the band! We want the band …”

The chant went up before tea from the crowd clumped there after the umpires, Kumar Dharmasena and Sundaram Ravi, shushed the brass band, who promptly got up and left, tilting the tuba huffily as they went.

They returned after tea, to cheers more rousing than anything offered for a player’s feat. But twice more the umpires suspended play to silence them, to an edgy swelling of boos.

No-one was surprised by then. On Friday, this ground, the country’s gently fading grand dame of the game was defiled by barbarians at the gate putting their misogyny where their faces were.

They wore Sonny Bill Williams masks in an attempt at humour that would have been risibly flaccid if it wasn’t so mindless.

Eight years before Candice Falzon married David Warner, she and Williams’ liaison in the toilet of a Sydney hotel was dragged through the more feral depths of the internet, photograph and all.

The masks, then, were a few pitifully limited individuals’ idea of getting back at Warner in the wake of the invective he spewed at Quinton de Kock on and off the field in the first test at Kingsmead.

That they should drag into this idiocy a woman who no doubt has enough male stupidity in her life is beyond crass. It is vile and disgusting.

That two senior Cricket South Africa officials, commercial and marketing manager Clive Eksteen and communications head Altaaf Kazi, should see fit to pose, smiling, arm-in-arm, in a photograph with three of these masked morons is a brain fart of nuclear proportions.

That SuperSport should say they will take no action against Derek Alberts, who celebrated this sick stunt on social media, is beyond belief.

At least CSA knew it had to, in a statement, “distance itself from the alleged action of certain officials” and apologise to “the board of Cricket Australia, its officials, team management, players and their families”.

Strange days indeed.