South Africa level up in Colombo amid angry noises from home

Is disappointment able to leap tall buildings, cross an ocean, traverse time zones, and hurdle a hemisphere? The first T20I at the Premadasa on Friday was a chance to probe an issue that loomed in the shadow of Thursday's unveiling of a South Africa squad for the T20 World Cup that only its selectors could love.

Unsurprisingly, the visitors' entire XI was drawn from the squad. How would they respond to the wails from home about the omission of Faf du Plessis and George Linde, and the odd idea that seaming allrounders were preferable to their spinning counterparts on the slow pitches of the UAE and Oman? Would the disappointment reach them and undermine their efforts?

You could have carved those questions into Colombo's muggy monsoon air. They remained unanswered as the South Africans