Geriatrics prosper in the Proteas bowling attack

 Moz, no problem with Matfield being good, but his time is limited, and while he is playing nearly every minute for the Boks, no replacement is given game time. We know what we have in him and more more experience won't make him better. It is daft not to blood other 5's. If Lood is too weak, try Eben at 5. If that does not work, give Sakkie Vermeulen, playing for Upingtons 3rd team a chance! Get someone else a go! Matfield should be backup, but the way things are going, he will be our RWC captain....and that would be utter disaster! Hope I'm wrong, but sadly, that's rarely the case...

 Draad I think our best bet might be Willlemse  at 4  and Etzebeth at 5. He is a fine lineout exponent. Then at minute 60 Victor comes on as our closer with all that experience. Our captain should be a forward and Vermeulen looks like the only leader guaranteed of his place now Bismarck has lost his cape.

 Mozart
You are on about two entirely different codes of sport.   It is generally accepted that cricket players last slightly longer than their rugby counterparts - but some cricket players definitely try their best to stay in the Proteas way past their sell-by date.
The fact that some players like Steyn and De Villiers are exceptional cricketers - has nothing to do with the rugby players - who play on reputation and are themselves way past their sell-by dates.
The worst example is Matfield - but the list of reputation players in the Springbok team is long and their presence detrimental to Springbok rugby.       

Sean Pollock test  retirement 34, Ntini 32, Brett Lee 32....  pretty much the same as rugby players. We have a foursome that averages one year less than a normal retirement date. That's old unless your name is OOm, in which cae it's  just confusing.

 Mozart
What is confusing?   What is obvious is that you are confused - you bring in all kinds of other sporting codes to try and justify retention of rugby players way past their best.
Cricket bowlers as they get older - finds that their bowling speed gets slower and less effective - hence their retirement at a stage before they disgrace themselves.  Gie them credit for putting their country before self-interest.   In any event they retire before they get dropped from the team  Spin bowlers have a longer playing life - because spin bowling is not affected as badly as fast bowling by advancing  years.
insofar as batting is concerned there is a huge difference.   The problem here is that aging impacts upon eye-hand co-ordination.   it has a different impact on test cricket and cricket in the shorter versions of the game.    In the case of test cricket batsmen can leave good balls alone and not play at them - while in the shorter versions of the game they have to play at every ball possible to maintain the required run rate.   This is where players like Smith and even Kallis stayed way beyond their sell-by date.   
Smith was poor in virtually every ODI he played in since 2010.   After a catastrophic performance in the first two ODI's at home against Pakistan in November 2013 - the coach told him he would be replaced by De Kock and he left the squad in a huff and was dropped from the team.     
In his last 8 ODI's Kallis made less than 10 runs per innings in 7 and only managed to make 50 runs in one ODI where he took 90 balls to make the 50 runs.    After a very unsuccessful performance in SriLanka in July 2014 - he announced his retirement from all forms of international cricket.   Kallis was unsuccessful in the IPL series last year as well - and his contract with the Colcatta Night Riders for 2015 was not renewed.   He is going to be one of their Consultants in future.    
Do you understand now why there are different retirement ages for players in different components of the game of cricket and the difference between cricket and rugby as completely different codes of sport?   
Incidentally your age story of cricketers is as per normal a pile of BS.   Steyn is still the no 1 bowler in world cricket - but his bowling speed is already in decline and it is unlikely that he will survive for longer than 2 years more.   You make the average age of bowlers look older by confusing it by adding in a spin bowler (Tahir at 35) - where age does not have as  important an impact as in the case of fast bowling.  If you unde rstand the impact of age on bowling - you would not write your standard BS about age issues in sport.                      
      

Okay leave Tahir out and the average is over 30....game, set and match.  

 OK.  Nobody said that over 30 cricket players are geriatrics.   Read the rest of the message I posted - and find out you are talking BS again.   Game. set and match.   

So you are saying ODI players decline before test players... which means the best ODI players should be younger, say 26 or 27.  But as usual you are dead wrong. Here we have the top 10 ODI batsmen according to the official rankings:
1 AB de Villiers  ...Age 30.92 Kohli 26.23 Amla 31.84 Sangakkara 37.25 Dahwan 29.16 Bailey 32.47 de Kock 22.18  Dohni 33.59 Dilshan 38.210 K S Williamson 24.4
So what does this tell us? Six of the top ten are over 30, only two are below 25. The oldest player is 38.
The average of the top ten ODI batsmen is, wait for it, 30.6.
Well another humiliation OOm. You really ought to test your theories with a few facts. Think about it as the egg slithers down your chins.

I can live with 29, 30 and 31........but a 38 year old lock when we have young locks to burn is just a no, no
As for Steyn, Morkel and Philander......we dont have anything close amongst the youngsters yet. de Lange is just back from injury and Rabada looks the real deal at 19.....it ends there sadly. We cant begin to compare our rugby talent to our cricket.....we dont seem to have young seamers coming through whereas in rugby we have 6 class youngsters in every position.
As for Tahir, he is nothing special that's for sure.....but we have no spinners, never really have had.