Even if, as South Africa's selectors have said, their men's T20 World Cup squad had been largely finalised during the tour to India in November and December last year, why was it released before the end of the SA20?

CSA made the squad public eight days after the SA20 started, 24 days before it is scheduled to end, and 30 days before the deadline for sending the names to the ICC.

That has created plenty of time and, thanks to the ongoing SA20, opportunity to criticise the selectors' decisions. The omission of Ottneil Baartman is the prime example.

Baartman had taken five wickets at an economy rate of 9.50 in two games for Paarl Royals when the squad was announced. In his three matches since he has claimed 11 at 7.50 runs an over. Overall that's 18 strikes at an economy rate of 8.39.

His absence from the squad looked particularly silly in Centurion on Thursday, when he took two wickets in as many balls and claimed a hattrick on his way to a haul of 5/16 against Pretoria Capitals.

That made Baartman the leading wicket-taker in the tournament after 25 of the 30 round-robin games, and earned him the best figures in this edition of the competition. Something similar is happening on the other side of the equation, where Mumbai Indians Cape Town's Ryan Rickelton - the only player to score two centuries in the history of the competition, both this year - is the top runscorer.

But, perhaps because the squad was announced prematurely, neither has cracked the nod for the World Cup. Why was the squad announced so unnecessarily early?

"Every country is required to submit their World Cup squads one month prior to the start of the tournament, including warm-up matches," Enoch Nkwe, CSA's director of national teams and high performance, told Cricbuzz on Friday. "This is a standard process for every World Cup, after which the ICC will make the official announcement once squads are received."

Nkwe is correct in that CSA had to hand the squad to the ICC by January 2, which they did. But CSA didn't need to announce it then, which they also did. They would have been within their rights to tell the ICC not to make the names public until January 31 - and they could have made tactical changes.

Of the 20 teams in the tournament in Sri Lanka and India in February and March, five - the United States, Pakistan, West Indies, Italy and the United Arab Emirates - have yet to reveal their selections. The ICC have those squads, but they haven't released them pending changes those teams might want to make - which they remain entitled to do, without explanation to the ICC, until midnight, Dubai time, on January 30.

Might South Africa be minded to fiddle with their prematurely announced 15? "We can still make changes, especially if there is an injury," Nkwe said.

That Baartman, who is among South Africa's reserves for the tournament, might need an injury to another fast bowler in order to make the grade won't please Dale Steyn - who has railed repeatedly against Baartman's exclusion on social media. During Thursday's match, Steyn posted: "Baartman just keeps impressing. Why did CSA not wait and announce their team on the night of the final, using this tournament as a form guide for players and pick from that? Now we see the selected players under pressure to perform and players who missed out killing it, all while CSA take the heat, and rightly so!"

Baartman himself might not agree, at least not publicly. After Thursday's game, he told a press conference: "The World Cup is a different story. All I can do is wish [South Africa] the best and wish for them to win it. I wasn't too disappointed [at being left out]. I didn't think I was going to be picked."

That is puzzling, because in the 10.5 overs Baartman bowled in the T20I series in India in December he took five wickets at an economy rate of 8.95. Only Lungi Ngidi took more wickets for South Africa. Was Baartman given the hint then that he would not be among the favoured 15?

Quite what was gained by jumping the gun and naming the squad before time is difficult to fathom. Doing so after the SA20 final would have heightened the drama around the moment, as well as given the selectors the chance not to look as if they were out of touch with what was going on in the game in their country.

Both of those opportunities have been squandered, leaving cricketminded South Africans to wonder - not for the first time - exactly what CSA were thinking. Or if they were thinking. Or if they were put under pressure by the country's increasingly irrational and reckless minister of sport, art and culture, Gayton McKenzie. He has been accused of censorship after unilaterally pulling an already approved work from South Africa's submission to the Venice Biennale. There is poetic symmetry in the fact that McKenzie told the team preparing for the Biennale of his action on the same day that CSA revealed their squad.

The playoffs included, there are nine games left in this year's SA20 going into Friday's game between Cape Town and Sunrisers Eastern Cape at Newlands. That's more than ammunition for this unfortunate and avoidable story to run and run, and grow and grow. Timing really is everything.