Black Thursday

When I see this picture, I don't feel depressed or disappointed. I feel absolutely disgusted. As Graeme Smith tucked away that final, insipid ball towards the mid-wicket boundary in Cape Town this afternoon, it struck me that the only reason my initial reaction to what happened yesterday was one of numbing shock and not disgust was because I still entertained the thought that somehow, given the extraordinary happenings over the last two days, it was possible to turn this around.

Now that that hope has been crushed by two of the ugliest Test hundreds one could ever be subjected to, there can be no running away from the fact that this is the lowest I have felt in seventeen years of following this once-magnificent cricket team.

And though I saw it live and in living colour, it is the black-and-white version of the Newlands scoreboard that will remain burned in my memory.