End of the great Rhodes Show

It was also worth regular run-outs. Every time a batsman steered the ball towards the point area against South Africa, he would hesitate — ‘‘yes, come, wait, no’’ — and stop and stare halfway down the track like a rabbit caught in a headlight.

That picture dates back to the 1992 World Cup. Rhodes, forever frozen in time, was caught curving through the air in a perfectly shaped swallow dive towards the stumps on the way to running out Inzamam-ul-Haq.

He would later say that that iconic moment had been the result of bad cricket. He had only dived, he said, because he had lost confidence in the accuracy of his throwing. Thank goodness for that photograph, for statistics will never do Rhodes Justice.

FIELDING GENIUS: South Africa’s most capped One-Day International, he played 245 games along with 52 Tests and averaging more than 35 in both. Cricket statistics, however, do not have an entry for fielding genius.

His art — and that it was — did not come easily. Nor was it pain-free.

At the end of team training, he would regularly stay behind, doing sprint work, working on his reflexes, practising diving to the ground and then springing back up as quickly as he could. Often he would have to arrange his own transport back to the hotel in semi-darknesss. He said every run saved cost an hour of practice.

The man was also permanently tattooed with grass burns — ‘‘roasties’’, he called them — which never seemed to heal.

The team physio kept spray-on plastic skin to stop the bleeding, but it never lasted long. Team mate Herschelle Gibbs idolised him and copied him down to the smallest mannerism.

The 33-year-old Rhodes had quit test cricket at the end of 2000 to spend more time with his wife Kate and his daughter. Asked what he was most looking forward to after the World Cup, he often replied: ‘‘Joining the real world.’’

It appears that wish will now come true.