There is no such thing as a national cricket team

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TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

So, all set for the Test series? The proper one, of course - Sri Lanka versus South Africa, starting next Wednesday at Galle’s grand old ground. Can’t hardly wait.

Who wouldn’t put that prospect at the top of their priority list? It is a contest between a team who have, not before time, made the leap from winning the 1996 World Cup to winning a Test series in England, and a side who not long ago looked like they would be the best in the game for years yet. And then Gary Kirsten walked away and Jacques Kallis and Graeme Smith retired.

Sub-plots abound. South Africa have not won a Test series in Sri Lanka since 1993. Soon, Sri Lanka are going to have their own retirement canyons to navigate when Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara bid farewell. The last time South Africa played a Test at the Sinhalese Sports Club - where the second Test starts on July 24 - they conceded a double century to Sangakkara, a triple century to Jayawardene, 10 wickets to Muttiah Muralitharan, and a total of 756/5. A game of such large proportions ended fittingly when the series trophy was presented to Sri Lanka’s captain, Jayawardene, from the back of an elephant.

What? You would rather watch England play India at Trent Bridge this Wednesday? Honestly? Whatever for? To see how one bunch of losers fares against another? Against the Lankans, the pathetic Poms found a way not to win the first Test and then found a way to lose the second. As for India, any team that fails to fight its way out of the wet paper bag that is a series in New Zealand cannot be taken seriously.

Yes, this is an attempt to goad Indians and the English into lashing out in defence of teams and players they seem to regard, erroneously, as national assets and powerful symbols of pride. Actually, the English could not care less: we are not talking football, after all. And, right now, English people who want to talk football - as in, World Cup football - are about as thin on the ground as Bedouin croquet aficionados. But Indian blood is different. It boils at freezing point at any attack, real or imagined, on their boys in blue or white.

That is an enduring mystery, because patriotism and sport should not be confused. Sport is about, or should be about, winning or losing or drawing and the stuff that happens within that often unholy triangle as players push a match towards one conclusion or another. Patriotism is sometimes about living, but mostly it is about dying. Spot the difference.

How well or badly a cricket team plays can never be an indication of how well or badly a nation fares. The term “national team” should be thrown out of the language of sport. Simply, there is no such thing. That is especially true in an era when players and teams are more highly prized by their employers for their impact in the field of marketing than they are for what they do on the field of play.

Teams represent themselves and the products and services they advertise. That is why the players in those teams are on far friendlier terms with the relevant companies’ representatives than they are with most of the rest of the citizenry. And that’s that - teams and players do not represent anyone or anything else; not you, not me, not our compatriots. To argue otherwise is to argue that Kevin Pietersen represents people who have comically high opinions of themselves. It’s tough being them, but they do not have a standard bearer.

South Africa does not do celebrity culture like India does because our firmament does not glitter with stars anywhere near the magnitude of Sachin Tendulkar or Shah Rukh Khan. It is perfectly normal to see Graeme Smith and his wife, Morgan Deane, having a meal at a restaurant mere mortals can also afford to visit. Smith and Deane will be recognised by almost all of their fellow diners and they may well enjoy preferential treatment from the waiters and managers, but they will not be accosted by strangers.

Smith - like Tendulkar or Maria Sharapova or Shah Rukh Khan - is nothing more nor less than a superbly talented, expertly skilled, handsomely rewarded entertainer.

Sharapova seems to know that, at least implicitly, as evidenced by the fact that she could not tell Tendulkar from a tuk-tuk driver. But, far more importantly, could she tell a proper Test series from a dismal dance between two bunches of losers?