Cricket has been played for many years with England the HQ of the original game.

Teams like England and Australia have had fully professional cricketers for decades. These fellows do not have day jobs, they are not full time farmers or workers. They eat, sleep and drink cricket and Australia and England have had the luxury of these types of cricketing prima donnas for years.

South Africa, sidelined by its racist regime apartheid wasn't part of international cricket until about 15 years ago. Effectively, South Africa, is one of the youngest cricketing nations in international cricket. And seen in this light the Proteas have achieved something nothing short of a miracle.

'It took India 19 years and 230 days to win their first Test when they started out'


Bangladesh is a new Test nation and it could roughly be classed in the same age category as South Africa. When we compare South Africa's performance over its short history to that of teams like Bangladesh, their achievement appears more remarkable.

Within 15 years, South Africa has beaten every team in world cricket and I can recall the first ODI World Cup South Africa played in. I remember watching and thinking, 'If this is how good world cricket is, we're going to clean up pretty quickly!'

Unfortunately, luck plays a fair part in cricket and unluckily we got rained out of certain victory straight up from the starting blocks.

A bumpy first 15 years it has certainly been. Like a teenager struggling through puberty, South Africa have battled through rapid changes. At the advent of their re-admission, the Springboks, as they were known, had to ditch their iconic name to become the Proteas. This was a harbinger of the rocky road of transformation that was ahead.

Although not entirely out of the woods, the South Africans, as ever, have shown their mettle. Lesser teams might have crumbled into oblivion following the West Indies and England, but not the Proteas, they are taking blows and fighting back.

The Hansie Cronje scandal must be South Africa's biggest blow, a shockwave big enough to scupper the Titanic left immense damage. But the Proteas have not gone under.

In rugby union the French are the dark horse likely to torpedo any team in the world on any given day. In cricket, South Africa have a similar quality.

It took India 19 years and 230 days to win their first Test when they started out. Have a look at South Africa's first 15 year stats, chalk and cheese!