Could it be that even at Lord’s tradition counts for zilch?
Indeed, it could, as Graeme Smith and his team discovered in the first Test against England.
The South Africans surged to comprehensive victories in their previous three Test matches at the seat of misogyny, woolly thinking and all things anachronistic. This time they slip-slid away for the first three days of the match.
The patience of some wretch in a queue at home affairs would surely be required if the Proteas were to escape with a draw.
Perhaps Smith, Neil McKenzie and Hashim Amla have all lost their ID books recently. They batted with exactly the calibre of resolve required to score centuries and save the match.
It was all about as attractive to behold as the sight of Jacob Zuma in the shower, but the job was done.
Even more satisfying was the fact that the ton scored by the Darth Vader of cricket, Kevin Pietersen, did not spur England to victory.
That would have been too much to bear in the wake of a prelude to the match in which the South Africans sounded like a biker gang ready to plunder a Sunday school picnic.
”Kevin and I would get on a lot better if he kept his mouth shut,” Smith said, stupidly, two days before the start of the game.
Jacques Kallis expounded on the cockeyed theory that South Africa would go into the match as clear favourites. Then he faked reluctance to accept that status. All that was left was for him to claim it, regardless of the patent absurdity. That he duly did.
Smith’s decision to send England in to bat seemed sensible, given the conditions and the hype that had been whipped up around the attack at his disposal.
A flawed performance by the South African arsenal seemed unthinkable. But the truth was that, aside from the proved threat posed by Dale Steyn, the attack featured a wide-eyed gangly kid in Morne Morkel, a burned-out Makhaya Ntini, Kallis the reluctant bowler and the mediocre left-arm spin of Paul Harris.
By the time England declared only Kallis hadn’t conceded a century of runs and that was surely only because he bowled the fewest number of overs.
Lord’s has produced pitches as devoid of life and character as a slab of tofu in recent seasons. This was the sixth consecutive drawn Test there.
But Smith can hardly be faulted for backing his bowlers to buck the trend. Trouble is, they performed as if they had just shambled off the plane from Jo’burg and would have struggled on any surface.
It is, in every sense, a long way from Lord’s to Headingley, where the second Test starts on Friday.
For a start, the non-English world’s idea of Englishness is encompassed by the grandiose turrets that frame the Lord’s pavilion. At Headingley spectators are greeted by a long, featureless roofed shed as flat as the caps that northerners wore 50 years ago.
Then there’s the pitch. A Leeds Test was last drawn in 1996. Since then England have won six and lost three.
Does that mean the South African attack should have a better time of it at Headingley?
Yes, but only if they bowl far closer to their potential, real or imagined.
Here’s another thing that’s changed: a bloke called Andrew Flintoff is back in the England squad. They say he can play a bit.