In a fit of uncharacteristic earnestness I have decided to respond to Telford Vice’s Business Day article. Please read it first.

Dear Telford Vice
I’m not surprised that supporters and writers across the country are resorting to more philosophical justifications for the Proteas’ performances in knockout tournaments. God knows, with the amount of frustration and heartbreak they expose us to, I’m surprised no one’s done some kind of spiritual cleansing ritual on the team bus yet.

It’s in our nature, and, in some cases, our employment contracts, to speculate on reasons for (and solutions to) such bizarre and painful patterns. And when all obvious factors appear to have been addressed without success, those who are brave or bitter enough start looking elsewhere. This is a good thing!

Your contribution to the above, published on the Business Day website earlier this morning, proposes an interesting notion; that the members of the public and press who maintain a tolerant and forgiving approach to our cricket team’s undeniably fragile mentality are, in a holistic sense, contributing to this reality.

I’m not going to disagree with you. However, as a proud member of the class of person whom you hold partially accountable for Friday’s catastrophe, let me propose an alternative interpretation of your article.

If, as you argue, the team’s performance can be affected by ‘mollycoddling’ from charitable supporters whom you paint as myopic and immature, isn’t it reasonable that the team’s performance can also be affected by the other side of the supporter spectrum?

You know where I’m going with this.

With the amount of negative, destructive and downright depressing bile that the average Proteas ‘fan’ regularly pukes out towards our team I’m surprised these guys can find the motivation to get out of their pyjamas in the morning, let alone scrape together every last fragment of talent, technique and energy available to them in competition against the finest athletes on earth.

I have enough respect for your awareness of casual attitudes towards the team not to feel the need to give examples of this behaviour. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen and heard what fans driven by childish notions of entitlement are capabale of saying. You’re aware of how the press appropriates this bullshit attitude to sell a couple more newspapers or to generate a little more traffic.

If you are willing to propose a relationship between supporters’ treatment of their team and the team’s performance, are you willing to acknowledge the influence of both sides of the supporter spectrum?

If you are, let me end by asking a question. Which of these two polarised approaches to supporting a team do you think the Proteas are exposed to more regularly?

Maybe when players ask us to stop calling them chokers it’s because they agree with your sentiment that a country gets the cricket team it deserves.

Little is expected of large retail outlets’ confectionery staff. I can’t imagine Pick n Pay clientele fracturing their limbs as they rush the bakery counter in an attempt to get to the last plum soufflé. I would also imagine that suggestion boxes would remain largely free of requests for a wider variety of crème brûlée.

To compensate for the effect that their clientele’s lack of sophistication may have on an ambitious member of the confectionery team, Pick & Pay management have created an interesting platform for creativity and self expression; seasonal baked goods.

While creating a reindeer shaped custard slice or a mousse in the form of a winged archer baby may not test the versatility of the classically schooled pâtissier, it’s bound to at least delay the onset of the misery so prevalent amongst a retailer’s workforce.

A selection of the V&A Waterfront PnP’s Easter efforts are depicted below. It bears some of the characteristics of a cake but I hesitate to use a term so dependent on identification. For all I know this abomination could be little more than a styrofoam mould dipped into a tub of liquidised beans and Pritt. Either way, it has no business being in the vicinity of anything edible.

Having personally encountered these ‘outputs’ and being able to spend some time studying these images, I have come up with a sufficiently bizarre explanation for the creation of these culinary evils. It can only be that the person who brought these forth wanted to recall Christ’s suffering but confused his iconography with the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But we’ve all been there, so it’s tough not to feel sympathy for the fucker.