It is a very long time since I competed at international level -- at
least it feels like a very long time -- but one thing I clearly remember
from the many one-day series in which I was involved was the thrill of a
possible clean sweep.

   There is only one thing harder than winning a series, and that is to win
every single game.  It rarely happens, even between undoubted favourites and
significant underdogs, so when you get the chance to do it, especially in a
five match series, the competitive instinct kicks in as hard as ever.

Long gone are the days when South African fans were satisfied with victory. As I said a couple of days ago, it is impossible to please everybody all of the time. The Proteas two nil up in the five match ODI series and there are as many questions being asked as congratulations being offered.

Sometimes it really is impossible to please everyone... or perhaps that should be 'it is impossible to please everyone all the time!'

The ICC T20 was a terrible tournament for the Proteas and, as far as I read and heard, they acknowledged that and took the criticism on the
chin. I know Graeme made a couple of comments on his Twitter page but I don't think it was 'inappropriate'. (Although he might want to be careful in future.)

The biggest difficulty in writing about the Proteas during an ICC world event is the danger of repeating oneself! How many times have we spoken about past failures, and how many more times can we contemplate doing it in the future?

I never really enjoyed media speculation when I was a player because I often felt that journalists and former players who were doing the speculating were not close enough to the team to understand how much effort and hard work was being put into the job. And now here I am, in exactly the same position.

Every cricketer I have ever played with or against would rather win every game than lose a few, but that is impossible.  So, given that every team has to lose from time to time a very good compromise is to lose the games which are not vital!
 

I write this column just over 24 hours before South Africa's opening game of the ICC T20 World Cup and I must confess that my levels of excitement are every bit as high as they were before the IPL final between the Mumbai Indians, for whom I was working, and the Chennai Super Kings.