The most hopeful salesman of them all was perched more or less halfway up the hill on one of the nondescript roads leading from an even more anonymous motorway to the Rose Bowl near Southampton on Thursday.
Indian fans streamed straight past on foot in their hundreds, their blue shirts offering him cold shoulders en masse. The Bollywood soundtrack booming from the cars on the road, which were sludged with traffic and people hoping to get to the ground in time to settle in before the first ball was bowled, also told us our man wasn't going to sell anything.
He had chosen to flog, understandably were all things equal, flags: SA's flag.
But all things were not equal, and there he was, lumped with an Indian clientele.
He was the leather lover in the vegan restaurant, the communist on the stock market floor, the boyband member with bad hair who could actually sing.
If any SA supporters were trudging up the hill, they hid themselves well. It was India über alles.
This might have confused our Airbnb host, who had, kindly, offered to drive us to the game. The previous day, she had asked who was playing.
"SA and..."
I didn't get the chance to complete the line-up before she said, "Jolly good; hope it's decent weather."
We finished the sentence: "...and India."
She was taken aback: "Oh ...not Hampshire?"
Umm .
She wasn't exactly a cricket person. But, as she drove us, she would have been forgiven for thinking India were playing Hampshire. There wasn't a SA fan in sight.
This might have unsettled her. She had spoken, more than once, of "those bloody migrants all rowing to Britain; why don't they row to France instead?", and sussed out the Indians driving on the same road with "they just don't have any spatial awareness".
She had spoken, more than once, of 'those bloody migrants all rowing to Britain; why don't they row to France instead?'
There's probably an app for calculating the point in the journey at which the racism of your driver outweighs the benefits of having them drive you, the answer carefully calibrated to take into account the gradient of said hill, the temperature and weather, the distance to your destination, and whether or not you have luggage.
We did, for the train to London late that night.
So we stayed put, and were dissuaded from taking issue with her bits of wisdom because she handed them down between screeches of "Don't let him!" when cars muscled in ahead of us. There was no way anyone could mention Brexit and get out of there alive.
It didn't seem sensible to point out that while people in England who weren't active cricket fans thought a World Cup involved county sides, the tournament couldn't be bigger on the other side of the globe.
As it should be. Fully half of the 10 competing sides are from Asia, the home of the game in any real sense.
Once in the ground, the Indians were cheered to their victory with gusto, though not to the heights of exaltation Bangladesh had reached at the Oval last Sunday.
Three days before that even the home side's supporters couldn't raise the Oval's roof as enthusiastically. Cricket won't be coming home if England win the World Cup - it will be on holiday.
The level is sure to be raised several levels above even that at Edgbaston next Sunday, when India and Pakistan clash. Never mind the Ashes, this is cricket's blue riband match; almost more important than the World Cup itself.
It might be more important than even cricket. On Friday the ICC decided MS Dhoni would not be allowed to continue to wear the insignia of the Indian army's parachute regiment on his wicketkeeping gloves.
Why would he do such a thing? Because he is an honorary lieutenant-colonel in the unit. Sport and politics are never separated, and shouldn't be. Sport and war? Well done ICC.
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