England cricket fans have put up with a lot of humiliations over the years but never would they have imagined their team would suffer defeat by Afghanistan in the World Cup.
But that is what we witnessed last Sunday and it was not a freak result.
The Afghans outplayed a misfiring England in every department to pull off a convincing and well-deserved victory.
England are the defending world champions and the extraordinary result has to be regarded as one of the biggest World Cup upsets of all time.
In their short cricket history, Afghanistan had previously only won one game in the World Cup and that was against Scotland in 2015.
Even more remarkable is that little more than 20 years ago, they didn't have a functioning national team.
Newspapers in England reflected the enormity of the result.
"England humbled,", announced The Guardian while the Evening Standard went for "England embarrassed''.
Looking towards the rest of the tournament, The Sun headlined it "England's hopes hang by a thread" and went on to describe the display against Afghanistan as "a performance of staggering ineptitude."
It is a far cry from the upbeat season England recently enjoyed in the Tests under the guidance of coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes.
What is odd is that several of the successful Test players from those exciting "Bazball" moments have not been able to replicate their form in the World Cup.
Having already been thrashed by New Zealand in the opening game, today's match against South African is of huge importance for England who are desperately hoping Stokes has recovered from his injury.
Most worrying for England has been the form of their seam bowlers particularly Chris Woakes.
The normally very reliable Woakes, who is also a useful bat, has been very wayward in the games so far conceding far too many runs and enabling opponents to get off to a flying start.
Fellow seamer Sam Curran has been equally ineffective.
Former England captain Michael Atherton was unimpressed by England's display, saying that "they looked off the pace" and summed up the whole performance as "sloppy".
There was little comfort for the England players from their supporters.
One fan came straight to the point saying "they just played absolute rubbish."
Perhaps speaking for many people was the supporter who wrote "let's just congratulate Afghanistan as the better side."
England's out of form captain Jos Buttler could do little more than admit his team had suffered a humbling defeat.
"It's a tough loss to take," he said, "congratulations to Afghanistan, They outplayed us."
However, he believed England will find their form and progress in the tournament.
Fortunately for England, they still have six games to go but they may have to win five of them to survive the group stage. It won't be easy.
South Africa themselves suffered a shock defeat this week to the Netherlands, a team they would normally be expected to defeat easily.
Nonetheless, England will have to be at their best in today's encounter because you can be sure that the previously impressive South Africans will want to show the Dutch result was just a "blip".
England also face tough matches against hosts India, Australia and Pakistan while success over Sri Lanka and the Netherlands is by no means guaranteed.
According to England ODI coach Matthew Mott, despite the poor start, there won't be huge changes.
He told the BBC: "I'm not going to throw out the baby with the bathwater."
However, Mott admits that the team is "low in confidence" which is something they must overcome very rapidly.