It's good news that South Africa's cricket authorities have scrapped their controversial quota system. This insisted on at least one "player of colour" in the national side and four in each provincial team, and it has caused arguments at national level and a damaging brain drain lower down. The most glaring example of the quota system compromising the Test team came at Sydney earlier this year, when Jacques Rudolph (white) was all set to make his international debut before Percy Sonn, the president of South Africa's board, stepped in and demanded that Justin Ontong (coloured) play instead. Actually Mr Sonn was moving the goalposts mid-match: there was already one player of colour in the team (Herschelle Gibbs), but suddenly the quota was upped to two.

The upshot was that poor Ontong was saddled with intolerable extra pressure on his Test debut, a stressful enough time anyway. He did reasonably well - but has hardly featured since. It's almost impossible to imagine how he must have felt, pulling on the coveted national cap for the first time but knowing that he wasn't among his country's first-choice XI.

Lower down the scale a number of promising white cricketers have suddenly discovered English, Irish, Greek or possibly Martian antecedents and turned up to ply their trade in county cricket, because they feared they wouldn't get into their South African provincial side on merit. Maybe that haemorrhaging will now stop, which can only be good for South African cricket (and English cricket too, as it happens).

The idea behind the quota system was sound enough. Sport was an obvious place to start righting the apartheid wrongs. It is marvellous to see black players like Makhaya Ntini and Ashwell Prince coming through and making a mark on international cricket. It was a dangerous anachronism that South African (and Zimbabwean) cricket was largely seen as the white man's preserve. But Herschelle Gibbs has said all along that he wanted to make the team on merit, not because of whatever colour he happened to be. Insisting on the inclusion of one player at the expense of another, regardless of ability or team make-up, was always going to be divisive.

Steven Lynch is database director of Wisden.com.

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