Ken Borland

Proteas captain Dean Elgar acknowledges that England are currently playing “brave and bold” Test cricket, but he is eager to see whether they can maintain that against the pace and bounce, and two quality spinners, of the South African attack when their Test series gets underway next month.

In a delirious month of four Test matches against New Zealand (3) and India (1), England’s powerful batting line-up has chased down four successive targets of more than 250 in the fourth innings with tremendous gung-ho and aggression, scoring at run-rates of 4.93 chasing 378 against the powerful India attack, and 3.53, 5.98 and 5.44 against the Black Caps.

“England have certainly been quite brave and bold, it’s been exciting and brought extra energy to Test cricket,” Elgar told Saturday Citizen. “I’m sure world cricket has been hit by surprise, especially in the way they chase.

“But it’s been on relatively batting-friendly pitches and conditions have been in their favour. There hasn’t been too much sideways movement and they’ve been allowed to play that game.

“Our seamers will also bring a lot more pace and bounce against them and we have quite a few options to exploit any pitches that do go up-and-down.

“It will be interesting to see the pitches they prepare, knowing the fast bowling arsenal we have, backed up by two quality spinners if need be. I know I would not like to face our attack,” Elgar said.

The left-handed opening batsman has brought a hard edge to the Proteas during his captaincy tenure; the more pressure Elgar is under, the more dogged he becomes. That character is reflected in his team: The current Proteas are hard-working, stubborn and they refuse to let anyone dominate them.

It is typical of Elgar’s personality that he is loving the prospect of England going all-out-attack on them and he is backing the Proteas to be able to handle the onslaught.

“It’s going to be exciting and luckily we have quite a few pace bowlers,” Elgar says. “The basics are still fundamental to Test cricket and patience is one of our strengths. We really enjoy taking it to the last day and strangling teams.

“We have done a lot of graft on our game-plan because there could be a false sense of needing to be drawn into the way England want to play. That would be a massive error and would take our strengths out of the equation. We’ve had a lot of brilliant fast bowlers going to the UK and dominating, so I’m excited about that.

“When one talks about an aggressive or positive style of play, one needs to define exactly what you mean by that. You can still be aggressive but savvy in the way you go about things. There will be times when we need to counter and times we need to absorb, that’s just the nature of Test cricket.

“Whether the way England are playing now has any longevity, I’m not sure. It has paid off for now. It’s certainly going to be a very exciting series,” Elgar said.

Rain washed out the second day’s play of last year’s Boxing Day Test against India at Centurion and, while the tourists enjoyed a lunchtime feast including broccoli soup, Chicken Chettinad and lamb chops, Proteas captain Dean Elgar was giving his team some of his famous tough love after a poor first day.

Having allowed India to rattle up 273-3 on the first day on a pitch that assisted the pacemen, Elgar told his team to “toughen up mentally, take responsibility and wear your big-boy pants”.

South Africa did fight back, but that first day had ultimately done too much damage. Their determination did, however, make them the most tenacious of opponents in the rest of the series and they pulled off a thoroughly unexpected series triumph.

It’s the sort of inspirational captaincy Elgar has now become famous for and he believes England’s newly-appointed skipper Ben Stokes will lead in similar vein when they host the Proteas in a Test series in August.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘stubborn’ captaincy but I’d say we are both f****** tough cricketers,” Elgar told The Citizen on Wednesday.

“It’s going to be a battle of feisty characters and Stokes is a world-class cricketer, and we know what he’s capable of because he’s done pretty well against us, albeit just as player.

“But as captain you need to get the best out of your players and it’s going to be interesting to see how he goes with the added responsibility.

“We play with our hearts on our sleeves because we always want to push for the win, but Test cricket comes down to who controls their emotions best. If you let them get the better of you, then the results generally don’t go your way,” Elgar said.

Elgar and Stokes are both left-handed batsmen, but their contrasting styles are very much the yin and yang of Test cricket.

Stokes is immensely strong and provides much attacking thrust to England’s middle-order, while Elgar, as an opening batsman, does not play with the same freedom but the time he spends at the crease can be equally draining for the opposition.

Both Stokes and Elgar have played 12 Tests since the start of 2021, with England’s new captain scoring just 633 runs at an average of 26.37.

Elgar, on the other hand, has been leading from the front since his appointment, with 881 runs at an average of 41.95.

“I don’t dwell too much on individual battles, my focus is on us as a team,” Elgar said. “And I haven’t had a lot of personal interaction with Ben, even though we have played against each other numerous times since an SA A series against the England Lions in 2015.”

A successful choir obviously needs everyone singing together in complementary fashion and the Proteas’ success over the last summer has certainly been a team effort, but coach Mark Boucher has spoken of the importance of having the two captains, Dean Elgar and Temba Bavuma, singing from the same hymn sheet.

Since the unfortunate experiment with Quinton de Kock as captain, Elgar and Bavuma have taken over the red and white-ball sides respectively for the last 13 months and the split captaincy has worked well, although the consistency of the limited-overs side has perhaps left something to be desired.

“Dean and Temba came in as leaders in a tough time,” Boucher said. “They are completely different characters, but they have rubbed off on each other. They feed off each other and they speak to each other a lot.

“They have also both been in really good form with the bat and have been leading from the front.

“What’s been particularly good is that they are on the same page when it comes to where they want to take South African cricket,” Boucher said.

Elgar said the success of the Test team has helped to ease the burden of captaincy, which is never easy when there is so much going on off the field to deal with.

“Everything good comes with a challenge and I like challenges,” Elgar said. “That’s why I’m still playing Test cricket at nearly 35 years old and I feel my best cricket is still ahead of me.

“If I was younger, maybe I wouldn’t enjoy the captaincy as much. It has been extremely testing off the field, but I have an amazing core of players around me, they respect and understand me as a person.

“I think we’re in a very special place as a team and that leads to me being a lot happier with what I’m doing. Getting results and playing good, strong cricket, definitely eases the burden of captaincy,” Elgar said.

Elgar and Boucher are both hard-nosed leaders who would perhaps not be out of place training recruits in the marine corps. And they have both suggested the players who went to the IPL instead of playing in the Bangladesh series will not automatically get their Test places back.

“I don’t think it’s fair to just say they come back,” Elgar said. “The guys playing now have made a massive statement. We have a decent batting pool now.

“Someone like Ryan Rickelton has taken to Test cricket pretty well, he’s had a taste and now understands it. Even if the intensity was not quite what it will be playing England.

“But it’s out of my hands whether the IPL guys get selected again,” Elgar said.

“The IPL guys did vacate their spots and there is now good competition for those spots. It’s a nice position to be in,” Boucher said.

The satisfaction of completing a successful summer with a 2-0 series win over Bangladesh was writ large on Dean Elgar’s face on Monday, but the South African captain knows that soon he will have to get busy analysing their Test campaigns and getting a handle on where they can improve for the bigger challenges that lie ahead later this year.

It does not get more convincing than their 332-run win over Bangladesh on Monday, their biggest ever at St George’s Park, but stiffer opposition lies ahead with tours to England and Australia later this year.

“Not a lot of people would have given us a chance of winning five out of seven Tests this summer and it’s great to have those numbers on our side,” Elgar said after Keshav Maharaj’s 7/40 had bowled the Proteas to victory.

“It’s been an extremely successful summer with a lot to build on, but my job is also to dissect our performances and get the negatives out.”

Elgar’s first and foremost concern was the batting and their failure to get more hundreds.

“From a batting point of view, we need to notch up more hundreds. Us senior guys are getting into position and we need to reach those three figures because we know how much pressure that then puts on the opposition.

“We haven’t quite nailed down the batting, and that’s on my own plate as well, so that’s the one main negative. But we’re extremely aware of it, we’re working bloody hard to fix it, maybe even trying too hard,” Elgar said.

The 34-year-old Elgar has been a hit as captain, introducing a hard-nosed, unrelenting style of cricket to the Proteas Test team. It has been a modus operandi that has resonated with the players and is a good fit with traditional South African values like determination and ruthlessness.

“I’ve been trying to install a way of playing that the team can buy into and we’ve come on leaps and bounds. As a captain, I’m now more experienced and I’ve been able to put my own leadership stamp on the group.

“I’ve gained confidence as I’ve been in the job and hopefully we have a style of play nailed down now that we can all follow. I know the players buy into it.

“I think the team is in a very special place, which means I’m a lot happier with what I’m doing as captain. Getting results and playing good, strong cricket definitely eases the burden of captaincy.

“I’m very grateful for the cricket we’ve played this summer and it’s been great to be competitive at this level,” Elgar said.