Some time during the second one-day international between England and South Africa, while Anrich Nortje was unleashing thunderbolts in the Manchester gloom, the BBC’s lead commentator, Jonathan Agnew, wondered why the Proteas possess a seemingly endless supply of fast-bowling talent. A number of variables were mentioned but one in particular was cited as the primary reason: “Raw meat-eating Afrikaners.”
Agnew then reached for a collective noun for these brutish seamers who feast on biltong from the time they can chew. The Beeb’s statistician, Andy Zaltzman, whose father is South African, offered the term “herd”.
