Ian Reid has never visited Australia © ESPNcricinfo

Ian Reid is not your typical Australian cricket fan. For one thing, he’s not Australian. In fact, he has never visited the country.

But at Australia’s nets sessions at Newlands at the weekend, he was one of the few people who turned up to watch the team train. To watch them rebuild after their all-out-for-47 debacle.

He’s as passionate in his support of Australia’s side as just about anyone around the world. A South African who grew up in Cape Town, Reid, 25, has been enamoured with Australian cricket since the Steve Waugh era.

“I just thought Steve Waugh’s die-hard attitude was a huge inspiration,” he says. “I love that aggressive brand of cricket we used to play – no fear.”

In his distinctly Capetonian accent, Reid uses the word “we” without hesitation. This is his team. Ricky Ponting from Launceston, Mitchell Johnson from Townsville. Ian Reid from Cape Town.

“My world was cricket, growing up,” he says. “I just found a natural pride and inspiration following Australian cricket. I liked the players a lot. I find it similar to music. I’ve always felt that you don’t pick an instrument, the instrument picks you. I’ve felt the same with the sport team that I follow. It picked me. It was the team that inspired me.”

During the day, Reid works in marketing and sales. During his spare time, he writes for a supporters’ blog that he started during the 2008-09 series against India, when public opinion was turning against the Australians. Through the blog, he has discovered he is not alone.

“I’ve met people in India who love the baggy greens, surprisingly even people in England who like them,” he says. “There are quite a few people in South Africa who are fanatical about either New Zealand, which you find a lot, or Australia.”

He’s even a fan of South Australia in the domestic competitions and tries to find live streaming of Redbacks’ matches online whenever he can. As for live cricket, he has been to nine Australia games, all in South Africa, and was in the crowd as the batsmen capitulated last Thursday. All the same, he does not see all doom and gloom.

“You have to put it down as just a freak cricket match,” he says. “It was a very weird game. Seeing it live, it didn’t really affect all of us as badly, although when Hussey dropped that catch off the last ball of the day, then it sank in. Then you felt it.

“But with the new selection panel, which I think will be a bit more on the pulse of Australian cricket, I’m a bit more positive. I know we’ve got the talent, I know we’ve got the stocks. Hopefully more consistent policies will bring about the change.”

And maybe one day he’ll get to Australia to see it.

Peter Roebuck, 1956-2011 © Getty Images

Sunday at the Newlands cricket ground was at once a typical day and an abnormal one. Barely twelve hours after one of the most widely-read columnists on the game, one of the sport’s most distinctive commentators, had taken his own life, Australia’s cricketers were in the nets.

As one life ends, others go on. The game does not wait. The Australians have plenty to work on after their loss during the week. On what was to be the fifth day of the Cape Town Test, they were already looking ahead to the Johannesburg match, which starts on Thursday.

A match that, in one of his final columns, Peter Roebuck had described as a chance for Australia’s incumbents to redeem themselves and for the new selectors to study the trends. Trends, Roebuck noted, like their trouble against the seaming or swinging ball.

He was restrained in his writing after Australia were dismissed for 47. It wasn’t always that way. Notably, he raised the ire of the Australians in January 2008, when he wrote that Ricky Ponting should have been sacked as captain for his role in the Sydney Test controversy against India.

On Sunday, Ponting approached the journalists watching the net session at Newlands and expressed how sorry he was to hear of Roebuck’s death. He was not sought for comment; he offered it unprompted and sincerely.

Ponting was interrupted by a freak hailstorm that hit without warning, dropping little balls of ice onto the heads of every player and onlooker as they ran for cover. Some were fortunate enough to be wearing helmets.

As the Australians made their way inside the assistant coach, Justin Langer, said Roebuck was a “great writer” and a “talent lost”.

Already, the captain, Michael Clarke, had mentioned his shock at being woken by the news in the early hours of the morning. At first, he didn’t believe it.

Disbelief was a common theme. Shane Watson’s face expressed as much as he stood with Clarke, eyebrows raised, shaking his head.

At times, Roebuck had passed judgment on them all, not always in the positive. But they recognised his knowledge of the game and respected that he was just doing his job.

The Southern Sun Hotel, where Roebuck died, is visible to the south-west from the Newlands ground. The ground where only two days ago, Roebuck wrote of Australia’s challenge of the next few days.

“Australian cricket is lucky that it has a few days of respite between the dumbfounding events at Newlands and its next engagement,” he wrote. “The break gives coaches, selectors and captain the breathing space needed to collect their thoughts.”

On Sunday, they were just doing that.

Phindile Kambule and July Machethe at AFL South Africa's office in Potchefstroom © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

One of the most unexpected sights for the Australian visitor to Potchefstroom is the office of AFL South Africa. Australians are mad about their indigenous football code – at least, those who aren’t from the rugby heartland states of New South Wales and Queensland. But few foreigners follow or even understand the sport. That’s something the game’s governing body wants to change, hence a presence in South Africa since 1997.

It was strange indeed to peer in the window of an office behind the grandstand at Senwes Park and see framed Fremantle and Essendon jumpers and a pile of oval balls. It is the off-season, but when the summer of cricket finishes, goal posts will be erected at either end of Senwes Park and the footy begins.

Leagues run in four of South Africa’s provinces, with matches every weekend, culminating in regional, then provincial and finally national championships. Surprisingly, there are 11,500 players of Australian rules in the country.

Disadvantaged communities are the primary focus of the programme. Understandably, it can take kids some time to get the hang of a sport they’ve never seen before.

“Some of the kids mistake it for rugby,” says Phindile Kambule, the events and marketing co-ordinator for AFL South Africa. “But in the long term they definitely know what’s going on.”

Some stick with it, like Bayanda Sobetwa, who stumbled on an AFL skills camp in the township of Khayelitsha when he was 17, and three years later found himself training in Australia with the AFL’s newest team, Greater Western Sydney.

I met Phindile and her colleague July Machethe, the national participation manager, at Senwes Park, where Australia were playing South Africa A in a tour match. The Australian cricketers sometimes stop by at the office when they spot the familiar logo.

“We always bring them footballs to train with when they’re here,” says July.

For the time being, the office is quiet, but come winter Potchefstroom will be an Australian rules hub. And maybe the next Bayanda Sobetwa will be there, breaking tackles and taking high marks. Sobetwa didn’t quite make it into the professional league, but he came close, and July believes a South African will crack the AFL soon.

“It should happen in the next five years,” he says. “Bayanda didn’t quite make it, but he was given a shot. I think in the next five years we will find the right player.”

The Spain football jersey at Senwes Park © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

If there was any doubt about what sort of place Potchefstroom is, the name of the cricket ground provides the answer: Senwes Park. Senwes is an agricultural business focused on grain producers, and inside the press box is a picture showing tractors, fertiliser, and maize – hardly things you’d expect at an international cricket ground.

These are not criticisms, but simply serve to highlight that Potchefstroom is no bustling metropolis. For an Australian comparison, it's more Geelong than it is Melbourne. That makes it all the more remarkable that the city, with a population of 125,000, has developed such a strong sporting pedigree.

Effectively, it’s a dual-World Cup winning city. In 2003, Australia’s cricketers based themselves there in the lead-up to the second of their three consecutive titles. And last year, Spain set up camp in Potchefstroom, from where they launched their triumphant FIFA campaign.

In fact, if you walk past the tractor photo and down a flight of stairs, you’ll find a signed Spanish jersey from last year’s tournament, a constant reminder that this is a sporting hub. The place might be short on tourist attractions, but it has world-class sporting facilities.

Sport is a way of life in Potch. As Australia took on South Africa A in their tour match at Senwes Park, kids were playing rugby and cricket on the grass embankment, soccer was under way at a pitch adjacent to the ground, and even AFL had a presence: the offices of AFL South Africa are based at the ground, part of the league’s optimistic expansion plan.

Even the older gentleman who runs the guest house in which I am staying works as a tennis coach, his phenomenal tan evidence of the decades he has spent under the sun. Coming as I have from Australia, a country with a rich sporting history but now with one of the worst obesity rates in the world, it’s good to know there is a place where outdoor activity is still king.