One of the depressing aspects of modern cricket’s eternal summer is the end of anticipation. Once, when cricket season meant summer rather than a vague and enervating nine-month convulsion unaffected by weather and logistics, a Test series was an event worth writing books about. No more.

Rational people, on becoming national cricket selectors, immediately start walking about on their knuckles while they forage for succulent roots. This, at least, is the firm belief of hosts of unappreciated armchair selectors. But even their fiercest critics must admit that sometimes, between chest-thumpings, they get it right.

With the cricket season in full swing, the question must be asked: what has South Africa got up its sleeve? With the tour of Pakistan mercifully fading into a dim memory of ineptness, and the season thoroughly under way, one has the sinking sensation that the answer to the question is: not a lot.

States run by despots are invariably highly efficient when it comes to presenting a picture of normality to visitors. This was witnessed by visitors to the former Soviet Union, a country apparently full of happy peasants hurling themselves with zeal at the arts of mathematics and tractor-assembling.

These days only two things are certain about Paul Adams. The first is that he will hook a nasty fast bowler en route to a boisterous 12, and look marvellous doing it. The second is that once an over he will drag his Chinaman down short, probably at leg-stump and straight into the sweet spot of grateful heave through midwicket.

In an age defined by the staggering amounts of information sloshing about, it is remarkable how many questions, abroad and at home, remain unanswered. How many doppelgängers does Saddam have?

Corporations and knuckle-brained philistinism have been so closely intertwined for so long that only the most naive spirit can claim to be shocked when some new Orwellian horror is presented as a good idea by the faceless men in grey suits.