The end. Never a pleasant thing to contemplate but it's here, it seems, for Herschelle Gibbs and Makhaya Ntini, who may never don the green and gold for the South African ODI team. With the pair having been left out of the upcoming series against Zimbabwe and England it seems the writing is on the wall.

Gibbs' exclusion has been a long-time coming. Gibbs has been flirting with controversy, too much booze and every girl in sight for a while now. He has failed to perform consistently in his last few outings and the spark he once had, seemed to waver recently, and then appeared to die completely in the recent Champions League tournament in India. It doesn't come as much of a surprise that the Proteas 'bad boy' is now just 'a bad boy'. He has left us with two fantastic knocks to remember him by though: the first, his blistering 175 in the 438 game at the Wanderers, and the second his six sixes in an over in the 2007 World Cup.

It's been a good innings Herschelle, now stay out of trouble.

Ntini's absence can also be explained. That body must be tired after years of running in to bowl. If the selectors want to prolong Ntini's Test career, then this is the most sensible way of doing it. He is only 12 wickets away from 400 Test scalps, and with the enforced rest, he may even begin eyeing the 500 mark.

Unlike Gibbs though, Ntini rarely caused any trouble and with his departure the team loses a leader. Dale Steyn and Wayne Parnell will, in all likelihood, open the bowling and therein lies the problem. Steyn has gone from being one of our more intelligent bowlers, to making ill-advised statements like "I don't think anyone can match us". One only hopes lessons learnt will see him stick to bowling and not making predictions.

Parnell, meanwhile, was wayward in the Champions Trophy. He took a lot of wickets but he also made a lot of mistakes. Strike bowlers are expensive commodities, in terms of runs, which we can all understand, but Parnell is also inexperienced. One of provincial cricket's veteran bowlers suggested that perhaps the way to bring Parnell to the fore properly in international cricket is to have him bowl in tandem with someone wise and experienced and I'm afraid that just isn't Steyn… for now.

The perfect mentor for Parnell would be Ntini, who also plays at the same franchise as the young seamer. That makes it a tricky conundrum for the selectors. Although Parnell needs someone like Ntini at his side, Ntini needs the rest. We can only hope that Parnell learns from Ntini at the Warriors and that more than just the veterans bowling skills rub off on the youngster.

We've already seen signs of Gibbs in Parnell, who was suspended for one match by the Warriors, for allegedly breaking a curfew. That sounds a little too familiar to be comfortable with. Parnell also listed Gibbs as one of his heroes in an interview early on in his career. The last we thing need is another disruption.

On page two Firdose casts her eye over the domestic scene — and it ain't looking good.

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