Alright, so it was disappointing, and certainly unexpected, given the rankings and recent form. Throw in the players, and there’s little doubt that most South Africans are feeling betrayed, cheated, let down. But the enigma that is sport has always revelled in caprice, and so it has to be taken firmly on the chin: yesterday, to the dismay of South Africans across the planet, Dan Nicholl and Big Lurker Fleming lost the Algarve Table Tennis Challenge to balding London cab driver Rich Valentine and his hulking life partner Bruce. Soul destroying stuff, I know...

The front pages of this morning’s Portuguese newspapers are welcomingly free of cricket; sadly, the Algarve is a de facto English colony, awash with sunburnt invaders, and so local cafes are full of The Sun, The Mirror, and other fine broadsheets revelling cheerfully in yesterday’s victory. Even here, then, thousands of miles away from Centurion, in a country where sport extends to Cristiano Ronaldo and some rather nice golf courses, the sting of a particularly painful defeat can’t be avoided.

Following the game proved to be an interesting experience. Having persuaded the barman at Smiler’s Pub that South Africa-England was of slightly greater consequence than Sunderland-Wolves, we watched the England innings in Carvoeiro, the village that’s home for this week’s golf, beer and sun. Having seen just how many Englishmen were present by the end of that innings — and Eoin Morgan’s efforts to do more for Anglo-Irish relations than Gerry Adams ever managed — it seemed astute to retreat to our villa for the remainder of the evening.

But as Graeme Smith, via CricInfo, played one of the great one-day captain’s innings, the allure of the game was too much to resist, and after trying and failing to watch the game online, we finally found sanctuary in Radio 2000’s streaming audio, with the welcome tones of Neil Manthorp, and the extraordinary observations that make Peter Bacela one of the game’s more compelling commentators. Voice rising and falling like a manic tide, quick singles are delivered as winning goals in World Cup finals, while crucial wickets pass by almost unnoticed, Bacela’s capacity for devastating understatement a marvel.

It can make listening to Bacela a little infuriating, however, particularly when you’re crouched round a laptop in rural Portugal, desperately urging your team on to an increasingly unlikely triumph. We did work out what happened in the end, though, Craig Marais playing rodeo clown to Bacela’s snorting bull; and so the night ended with the stark realisation that once again, limited overs cricket is destined to break South African hearts.

What wasn’t particularly clear from the muddled excitement of the closing overs was the runner issue, but the inference was that Andrew Strauss simply turned down Smith’s request for assistance. It didn’t appear to have changed the game, and there may well have been more to it, but sportsmanship would appear thin on the ground if South Africa’s captain was given a flat ‘no’ to a question that’s almost always asked out of courtesy, and no more.

Strauss as public enemy number one, then, but I’d imagine blogs and forums are already awash with vitriolic assaults on a team so desperate to shrug off allegations of choking, but so chronically incapable of doing so. Graeme Smith’s defeat, particularly after playing such a splendid innings, will be as galling as anything he’s had to endure in his career; while I have golf, beer and sunshine to ease the pain of a crushing table tennis defeat, South Africa’s skipper may find his week ahead slightly more trying.

Contact Dan at dan@metropolis.co.za

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