Ken Borland

All Blacks coach Ian Foster seemed to burn with righteous indignation when he criticised the New Zealand media for a “vicious onslaught” against him, following his team’s pressure-relieving 35-23 victory over the Springboks at Ellis Park on Saturday evening.

Foster was widely expected to be fired if the All Blacks had suffered a second successive loss to South Africa, which would have been their sixth defeat in seven outings. But his All Blacks team showed glimpses of past glories as they stretched the Springboks out wide with a rapid offload game, won the breakdown battle, stood up well in the set-pieces and defended as if their lives depended on it.

“The stress has been good for me, I guess, I’ve lost one kilogramme,” Foster wryly observed. “It comes with the job but it has been a pretty vicious onslaught, particularly from the New Zealand media.

“Calling them popgun selections I feel is quite insulting to players who are giving their all for their country. But these times are the best test of character.

“I’m intensely proud of that performance. I could not be more proud, to do that at altitude with the game swinging around – there were times we could have won and times we could have lost.

“It was 0-0 for a long time and you could feel it was a real arm-wrestle, but that’s what South Africa are like here. You have to bide your time and we wanted to target the second half and tired legs with the way we wanted to play,” he said.

For the prudish, a Springboks versus All Blacks Test at Ellis Park could be one of the more grosser experiences: the crowd is almost baying for blood, coarse language flows freely and within the first 10 minutes there was a fight in the main grandstand.

But Foster, feeling vindicated, relished the occasion as the All Blacks produced their staple response to the pressures of playing in Johannesburg, notching their fifth win in their last six games there.

“It’s a pretty special occasion and the All Blacks versus Springboks rivalry often generates moments like this. I would like to thank South Africa for their contribution to this amazing spectacle,” Foster said.

“We are very proud to hang on to the Freedom Cup, it is very important to us. The performance today was the result of the last two-and-a-half weeks, this team has reformed and reshaped a bit.

“I saw the same character last week as well, but we did not get the bounce of the ball and did not play well enough. Sometimes a dramatic change just comes from playing more together.

“Long-terms success often starts with adversity. I said last week was our best performance of the year because I saw some signs of competitiveness. This game needs patience, which some people don’t have,” Foster said.

Temba Bavuma can complain with righteous indignation over the misfortune that saw him miss the entire Test series against the West Indies, but he can have no complaints over the quality of preparation his T20 side will be getting against a home team packed with giants of the shortened version of the game.

The five-match T20 series starts at St George’s in Grenada on Saturday and the West Indies have T20 legends Kieron Pollard, Chris Gayle, Andre Russell and Dwayne Bravo in their squad. It will be a daunting challenge for Bavuma, who will actually lead his team out on to the field for the first time in a T20, having missed the series against Pakistan due to injury.

That bad luck with injuries followed him to the Caribbean, where he was on the sidelines of the memorable Test triumph due to first a hip problem and then a dislocated finger while training for the second Test. So Bavuma will certainly be eager for the contest.

“As a team we’ve had various discussions on the type of cricket we want to play and now we have a chance to test that against a very strong outfit, the West Indies obviously being one of the favourites for the World Cup later this year. We get the chance to test our skills against their’s and that should give us a clearer picture of what needs to be done.

“It’s going to be a good measure, it will show us where our standard is in our game. We don’t have confirmation yet of where the World Cup will be played, so we are just looking at the challenge against the West Indies now. We want to play our best cricket in these conditions and they might just happen to be similar to what is found on the subcontinent,” Bavuma said on Friday.

Half-a-dozen of the players who no doubt quaffed some celebratory drinks following their leading roles in the Test series triumph are likely to play in the first T20, while Bavuma and spinners Tabraiz Shamsi and George Linde were also part of the Test squad. So there is plenty of feel-good continuity in the Proteas camp.

“The Tests went exceptionally well and the outcome of that was momentum and confidence. Although this is a different format, quite a few of the players were involved in the Tests. It’s only natural that we want to continue as is, carrying the same language through, with most of the guys being the same. The discussions Dean Elgar and I have had about how to take the team forward obviously bore fruit.

“We’ll only finalise our plans after practice today because it has been raining and the weather is a bit of a concern. We haven’t had an opportunity yet to look at the pitch, but it’s fantastic we’ve got options when it comes down to spin, all-rounders or bolstering the batting,” Bavuma said.