Interesting Read:
Cape Town - Whether you regard some of them as "turncoats" or not, South Africa's foreign legion of cricketers are, ironically, keeping the country's battered reputation intact to a degree in the UK.
While the national team continues to undo all their heroic work in the Test series there this summer by staggering from one ODI pasting to another, South African players on the County Championship circuit - many of them Kolpak exiles - ride high in the averages.
Indeed, a healthy lobby of observers back home will bitterly suggest that at least a handful of them could be offering the embattled Proteas ODI side battle-hardened experience and skill at this time of deep adversity.
Whatever may be said about the strength or otherwise of county cricket, it remains a playground for a multinational array of tough and committed first-class cricketers, many of whom (not just South Africans) are there more because they have been shoddily treated by their various national selectors than for any "has-been" reasons.
Bidding to be the season's top-scorer
With three rounds of four-day matches to go for 2008, in most cases, the batting lists for Division One and Two feature at least five South Africans vying to be top dogs.
Leicestershire's HD Ackerman is the leading run-scorer in Division Two with 1 169 at 64.94.
He is one of seven batsmen in that division to have gone past 1 000 runs thus far, and among three who are South African-born: Lance Klusener of Northamptonshire and Jonathan Trott of Warwickshire are the others.
The evergreen "Zulu", who turns 37 on Thursday, clouted 202 in his last outing against Glamorgan to propel him to the top of the averages with 1 095 at 78.21.
Cape Town-born Trott, who has already played two Twenty20 internationals for England, has 1 020 runs at 63.75. In Division One, Jacques Rudolph, at 27 only approaching his prime, yet a Proteas yo-yo man for several years, is among five batsmen already in four figures each for runs accumulated and bidding to be the season's top-scorer in the elite division.
Competing fiercely
The Yorkshire left-hander has had a commendably consistent season at Headingley and boasts 1 130 runs at 56.50 with five centuries: competing fiercely with him is Kent's Martin van Jaarsveld, another Proteas discard (1 110 at 55.50).
Former England players Marcus Trescothick (1 179) and Mark Ramprakash (1 027) have chart-topping aspirations of their own.
In the Division One bowling department, Ryan McLaren (Kent) boasts the sixth most wickets - 42 at a suitably lean 22.59. Moves are reportedly afoot to try to get the promising all-rounder back "on side" as a South African rather than face the possible peril of the 25-year-old aspiring to strengthen Kevin Pietersen's rampant England yet further one day.
Continue to excel
Meanwhile in Division Two, two bowlers who could very well have enriched the Proteas' vulnerable and footsore ODI attack in England, Charl Langeveldt and Johan van der Wath, continue to excel.
Langeveldt has 50 Championship scalps for Derbyshire at 21.86 and has revelled in UK conditions which require a different approach to the sometimes naively South African "back-of-a-length" monotony. Only two bowlers presently eclipse him for total wickets taken.
Van der Wath, who also bludgeons a long ball down the order - a quality the current Proteas side chronically lacks in the post-Pollock era - has 43 wickets for Northants at 20.13. At 30, this Free State Eagles product is another player who may very well get slightly better before he recedes into the ranks of journeyman.
Food for sobering thought?