Sunday, 16th July 2006 at 11:33 pm

Royal gift

It’s been one-way traffic on the sporting field between South Africa and England - we’ve sent them Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Strauss, Stuart Abbott, Robin Smith, Allan Lamb, Mike Catt and Duncan Fletcher, to name a handful; in return, we’ve got Terry Paine and Robin Jackman. Hardly a balanced ledger…

And if you look at two of those names in particular - Pietersen and Catt - they were two no-name players who only surfaced above the sporting radar once they’d landed in England. Which leads to the next man set to head north: one Jake White. Now White isn’t quite the unknown that Pietersen and Catt were when they departed, but the inauspicious start to the Tri-Nations (alright, the downright appalling start to the Tri-Nations) means that White’s stock is as low as it ever has been.

Which sets up another tale of South Africa getting the rough end of the sporting stick. The prospect of well-paid sanctuary in England has only grown stronger post-Brisbane; provided the RFU still wants him, how long until White takes up the post? And from there, how long until he leads England to victory over the Springboks - or worse still, a World Cup triumph in Paris next year? On the evidence of the Wallaby loss, improbable - but then who would have said a number eight batsman who bowled occasional off-spin for KwaZulu-Natal would become England’s most precocious middle order talent?