Ken Borland

Spinner Tabraiz Shamsi says the Proteas are seeking lessons from the past in order to ensure that they improve as a team, which is why the honest conversations they had at their recent culture camp have proven to be so valuable.

“The biggest thing for me from the camp was that as a group we realised that we can gain a lot of strength from communicating properly with each other. As hard as it is, it was really important as a group to discuss racism and race because it is a big part of our history in South Africa and we were divided in the past. Previous players have spoken about things being unequal so they had to go through hurdles that should not have been there if it was a level playing field.

“We need to look at the past and take the good things and add to them so that we are even more successful. We want to get better as a team and having so many young players is not necessarily a bad thing, it makes us a bit of an unknown package. But at the same time we need to make sure those hurdles are taken away from the system, they cannot be tolerated,” Shamsi said on Monday.

With the retirement of so many stars of the last decade like Hashim Amla, Vernon Philander, JP Duminy, AB de Villiers and Morne Morkel, the Proteas are going to be suffering from a lack of experience in the immediate future, but Shamsi is confident they are well-equipped to get through the tough teething stages of a rebuilding team and re-emerge as a powerhouse in world cricket.

“Most of our senior players retired in a clump and you can’t just replace that experience, it leaves a massive gap. For whatever reason, we didn’t have the youngsters learning below them and then coming through to replace them seamlessly and it might be difficult at first to perform consistently. But it’s not all doom and gloom and I am very comfortable with where we are as a team and the direction we’re going in. “We want to create a bubble for ourselves in which we can fight for each other and our country, now that we all understand where we’re coming from. I learnt a lot personally at the culture camp, there were things I did not know. I’m sure it was a good learning curve for management as well and we now understand each other much better. We’re definitely stronger than we were before the camp,” Shamsi said.