Nicky Boje retires

It's a harsh world where Ashley Giles gets vilified for being a middling spinner who can bat a bit. So how come Nicky Boje was never held in such low esteem. Here's a player who managed to play 43 Tests and averaged virtually the same figure with the ball.

The only possible explanation for Nicky Boje's repeated inclusion in South African Test sides was that they were experimenting to see just how many batsmen they could field before anyone noticed. Because Nicky Boje was a batsman, really, wasn't he? He was probably the best number nine batsman there's ever been.

We've nothing against Nicky Boje per se. We just feel that he's emblematic of South Africa's innate conservatism of selection. Much as Ashley Giles is for England, currently.

Nicky Boje was of course implicated in the Hansie Cronje match-fixing scandal. We wouldn’t be the first to question whether it was physically possible for Nicky Boje to underperform.