Ken Borland

One would not have guessed from Mark Boucher’s face that he was celebrating another Proteas series win on Monday, but the lack of a big smile was probably because the South Africa coach knows his first priority now is to save his job in the face of those in South African cricket who are intent on his removal.

The Proteas ended their season on Monday in Gqeberha with a crunching 332-run win over Bangladesh for a 2-0 series win and an overall record of five wins from seven Tests this summer.

Combined with their unexpectedly good showing at the T20 World Cup and their brilliant 3-0 ODI whitewash of India, their coach should be sitting pretty and all smiles.

But instead Boucher will be facing a disciplinary hearing next month over charges of gross misconduct. In terms of his on-field job, in the here-and-now, about the only shortcomings of this Test side have been their annoying tendency to lose the first Test of a series, as they did against India and in New Zealand.

“It’s been a good summer, but we are still learning, we’re definitely not the complete team yet,” Boucher said sternly. “We’ve had our challenges, but we’ve played some very competitive cricket at times.

“There have also been times when we have played some bad cricket, like the first Tests against India and New Zealand. But we have grown a lot in a short space of time.

“For me personally, it has been tough. I’ve really enjoyed coaching the guys and the cricketing side of my job, it’s a tight unit. But outside that team environment, it’s quite difficult to say I enjoyed it.

“I don’t think anyone would be able to say they enjoy what has been put on my plate,” Boucher said.

The 45-year-old was famous for being a fighter though in his playing days, and overcoming challenges is his trademark, something his team managed to do against Bangladesh when they were lumped with a second-string side due to five players choosing to go to the IPL instead.

“It gave us the opportunity to play a couple of other guys and see what sort of players we have in the system. And also the opportunity to play a different brand of cricket, which has been good to watch.

“It’s a nice position to be in. The IPL guys did vacate their spots, and there is good competition now for those places. Through Covid we’ve looked at a lot of players and I think it’s paying off now,” Boucher said.

But even though things on the field are going well right now, the sum of all real South African cricket lovers’ fears could well come true if Boucher is fired for incidents that happened in the changeroom two decades ago.

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.

Given they have already fielded one debutant in the batting line-up in Sarel Erwee, one could sense Proteas captain Dean Elgar’s unease when it comes to introducing another new face for the second Test against New Zealand starting in Christchurch at midnight on Wednesday evening South African time, but making runs right now is surely the embattled Aiden Markram’s last safe port of call.

Markram was far from the only failure in a first Test which saw the Proteas bundled out for embarrassingly low scores of just 95 and 111, but his poor run of form now extends to just 97 runs in his last 10 innings. Captain Elgar admitted on Wednesday that the time for talking is over.

“There is a big possibility of a couple of changes, no doubt,” Elgar said. “Conditions and weather will play a part, but some guys are low on confidence, especially in the batting. But it’s difficult for debutants to come in and make a play.

“Aiden is a tough one and I don’t need to speak to him anymore. We’ve had a lot of tough conversations, he needs to score runs and his position is vulnerable at the moment.

“He knows that. There’s no need for me to harp on about it. He needs to contribute, he’s in a very important position in the top-order. We can’t afford to carry guys in positions like that.

“We’ve had a lot of very good conversations over the last few weeks that have definitely resonated with him. But I need him now to return the favours,” Elgar said.

Apart from the uncertainty surrounding Markram, South Africa have also suffered a blow to their bowling hopes with the news that Lungi Ngidi is still on the road to recovery from his back strain and will not be available for the second Test either.

The Proteas bowlers made the spiteful Hagley Oval pitch look like a road at times, so poorly did they bowl, and Elgar would have loved to have the accurate and probing Ngidi as an option, coming in for Glenton Stuurman, who showed promise with the new ball on debut in the first Test, but grew increasingly flat and ineffective as New Zealand’s massive first innings grew and grew.

If the pitch is considerably flatter after a week of more sunshine than it was for the first Test, then spinner Keshav Maharaj may come into the reckoning. But South Africa are unlikely to not field four pace bowlers, so the left-arm spinner would have to replace a batsman, a risk in itself given what happened last week.

As they prepare to face the Sharks in a vital United Rugby Championship derby at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday, the Bulls’ focus seems to not be so much on the way they play but the speed with which they execute their plans.

Sluggish would be one of the words to describe their grinding 21-13 win over the Lions last weekend, and it is clear coach Jake White has instructed his team to lift their intensity and therefore their pace of play when they take on the Sharks.

“We will take some confidence from the Lions game, but it is clear we still have a lot to learn,” scrumhalf Embrose Papier said. “It was a very slow game and we need to work on our breakdown.

“It’s going to be a tough game and a big physical battle against the Sharks because they are a really good side with a lot of Springboks. But as scrumhalves we have to be really fast. Our forwards do too, they need to set quickly because the Sharks scrumhalves like to snipe as well.

“We have taken quite a few positives out of the Lions game but there’s also been a lot to work on. It was a slow game, but when teams come up to Loftus and the altitude here, we must lift the tempo so we make it hard, especially for teams from the coast,” Papier said.

Apart from injecting more speed into his service from the breakdown, Papier has also been putting plenty of work into his kicking game with consultant Fourie du Preez, the great former Springbok scrumhalf.

“I just played running rugby at Garsfontein school and at U19s and U21s, but I made lots of mistakes and that’s why coaches devise plans. So I play more in the system now and I can still do my own thing in the system.

“I’ve been trying different styles of box-kicks and I now feel comfortable with the way I’m kicking. I need to do the basics right and stay in the system, get the balance right between passing and kicking.

“Fourie is a legend with lots of experience and I am learning a lot with him. We work a lot on passing, kicking and running lines. Fourie was one of the best ever at those and he also had a big work-rate,” Papier said.