When South Africa re-entered international cricket with such a bang a decade ago, Bob Simpson was sceptical. South Africans could play on adrenalin only so long, he thought: sooner or later, they would drift back to the field. Watching them today was to be reminded of that prophecy. There was perseverance, but no exhilaration, and a hint of the embattled, on-field and off. Perhaps it was fortunate that they were taking a licking from Damien Martyn and Shane Warne before lunch, however, for it saved them listening to a fascinating ABC radio interview with Percy Sonn, the president of the United Cricket Board of South Africa, about his pre-match intervention in the promotion of coloured Justin Ontong at the expense of white Jacques Rudolph.

Sonn managed to be simultaneously uncompromising and ambiguous. On one hand, he claimed that his intercession was "affirmative action" at work; on the other, he suggested that the South African selectors, in originally opting for Rudolph as No. 3 so Boeta Dippenaar could drop to No. 6, had indulged in "gerrymandering", and that he'd interposed to ensure selection on merit. If Sonn genuinely suspects his selectors of caballing, then one wonders if the position of Shaun Pollock as selector and captain is truly workable.

This is not to say that the old piety that sport and politics shouldn't mix is other than redundant. Politics entered sport the moment that players entered fields under national banners and, not least in South Africa, one could no sooner separate them than unmake an omelette.

Nor is it to dispute the legitimacy of "affirmative action", or even the efficacy of quotas, however blunt an instrument they may appear in the encouragement of coloured cricketers. If quotas are to operate, then by all means let them.

Yet it is amazing that there should be ambiguity on this issue, and that the United Cricket Board should have so belied its name in this case. They are playing a dangerous game. The faith that players place in selectors is, at the best of times, fragile. Capricious vetoes are even more corrosive of trust. Sonn's comment that, as professionals, the South African team should simply do as they were told, smacked of cricket administration at its old-fashioned feudal worst.

A consequence of black-majority rule in South Africa, furthermore, is a gnawing insecurity among its white population, the feeling that one must do the best one can while the going is good; indeed, it is hard to resist the suspicion that this played a part in Hansie Cronje's willing corruption, and that it also influences those in South Africa who shrink from condemning him. The risk is that the cricket team which used to imbibe adrenalin will become one that merely secretes gall.

Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's leading cricket writers and the author of several books including The Summer Game, the acclaimed history of Australian cricket from 1948 to 1971, and a new biography of Warwick Armstrong.

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Day 1: Busy making history

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