Then Graeme Smith walked in. A proud, tough but increasingly genial man. He shouldn’t have, but sport produces such characters. A bad leading elbow and a broken left hand meant going to the toilet would have been bad enough, packing a bag would have been tough. Putting on a glove would have been a nightmare but he was prepared to walk in to face two bowlers bowling at more than 140 kilometers an hour. With all your limbs and all your faculties available it is a challenge. And he blocked and he blocked till a nasty one crept through a fairly limp bat. Australia had won, but so had South Africa. I can’t think of another game, other than life, where saving the day can be so exhilarating and heroic.

It is moments such as those that Steyn and Ntini and Smith encountered that show up the kind of person you truly are. When the going is good almost everyone can swim with the tide but it is when confronted by adversity that character emerges; or, as Warren Buffett said, when the tide goes out you know who has been swimming naked. Smith’s decision to bat was brave, courageous, some might say foolhardy but he would have slept well at night knowing he had given the team everything he had. And he can now ask it of his team. In an era of political manoeuvering and lying, missiles and rockets and killing and corporate hoodwinking, it seems a pretty noble thing to do.

... contd.