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.

While most of the attention around the Sharks has been focused on the lack of clinical finishing in their attack, the gaps in their defensive matrix are also a concern as they go into their vital United Rugby Championship match against the Dragons at Kings Park on Friday night.

As coach Sean Everitt has pointed out, while the Sharks were extremely wasteful of their opportunities in last weekend’s loss against Edinburgh, they also leaked three tries in sodden conditions, so it’s not as if their defence was faultless either. And the Dragons scored three tries against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld to show that they have the weaponry to hurt the home side if they lose their shape in defence.

“In the last week everyone obviously looks at the opportunities we created on attack and were not converted, but we also need to look at the tries we conceded,” Everitt said.

“We let in three tries, so that means we need to score four to win the game, but that’s very difficult in these conditions.

“There were small details we fell short on in terms of taking our opportunities, but it’s a massive issue that we conceded three soft tries that we could have handled normally,” Everitt said.

The Sharks coach seldom volunteers much comment on individual performances, but given the spotlight on Curwin Bosch, Everitt felt the need to set the record straight on his starting flyhalf.

“There’s been a lot of talk about Curwin and we need to be factual,” Everitt said. “His kicking has been really good until last week and his kicking stats are the best we have.

“Against Zebre Parma he controlled the game and attacked much better than he had before. In terms of game-management, he did really well against Edinburgh.

“He showed his class in tough conditions and we were able to win 65% territory. Plus no-one sees the leadership he puts in through the week, how he performs well in training,” Everitt said.

Victory against the Dragons is crucial for the eighth-placed Sharks because they host the in-form Lions in their next match, before closing the round-robin campaign with games against top sides in Leinster, Connacht and Ulster.

Sharks eighthman Sikhumbuzo Notshe certainly has the x-factor gene in abundance, but he says his focus is on the basics as he continues his comeback from serious injury. It is an attitude the profligate Sharks team in general would probably benefit from after their embarrassing lack of finishing cost them against Edinburgh last weekend.

Notshe ruptured his patella last May and only returned to action at the beginning of February. Starting in the Currie Cup, his form has been good enough to see him reinstalled as the Sharks’ first-choice eighthman in the United Rugby Championship side.

“There are always a lot of extras one can focus on in rugby and I know I’ve got x-factor,” Notshe said on Tuesday. “But that’s not my focus going into games.

“I just try and get into as many battles as I can, make as many tackles as I can, make sure I set the maul properly if that’s my job.

“I just try and do the industrial work first, my other abilities will come naturally. In terms of my best, I’m not there yet and I am still working hard.

“The road to recovery was tough, but I had the best rehab and support I could get here at the Sharks in Dean Macquet [head physio] and Jimmy Wright [head biokineticist]. But it was a helluva road,” Notshe said.

In terms of fixing the disgraceful finishing shown in their last match, when they spent much of the game in the Edinburgh 22 but could only score one try, Notshe said you needed to look at individual errors, which can only be fixed on the training field.

“Our conversion rate in the 22 has not been great, we know how to get there but we just can’t finish off our opportunities.

“It comes down to individual errors and we need to clean up our own personal games. You can only do that through time in the saddle, on the training pitch. We need to put ourselves in those situations over and over again.

“And you can never make the weather an excuse. We’re playing at home, in front of our people, so we must always have energy. We can control that but we can’t control the weather.

“We don’t want to be a side that makes excuses and you can’t wait for a sunny day in Durban. We must always express ourselves,” Notshe said.

Proteas captain Temba Bavuma criticised the number of soft dismissals his batting line-up suffered and their lack of intent in their humiliating nine-wicket defeat, with nearly half their overs remaining, in the third ODI against Bangladesh, who won their first series in any format in South Africa.

Having won the toss, elected to bat first and reached 46 without loss inside seven overs at Centurion, the Proteas folded meekly to be bowled out for just 154 in 37 overs.

“There were a lot of soft dismissals and too many in the top-order,” Bavuma said. “Intent is the big word, we need to play with intensity and clarity, we need to back our plans 100%.

“But that wasn’t there in the third ODI and we did not execute at 100% either. From a confidence point of view, there was a lot of belief coming out of the India series win.

“But we did not respect our processes at Centurion, maybe we just expected things to go our way. We know Bangladesh have the tag of not being one of the bigger teams, but they showed skill and execution at a high level.

“They really put us under pressure with the ball and bat in how they executed their game-plan and the basics in these conditions. The way they played and the skill they displayed was at a high level,” Bavuma said.

Having whitewashed India 3-0 in January with the same team but bolstered by the inclusion of ace fast bowler Kagiso Rabada, now being beaten by Bangladesh (even though they have improved impressively) on the Highveld rates as one of the most embarrassing defeats the Proteas have ever suffered.

A nonplussed Bavuma regarded his team’s inconsistency as being his biggest concern.

“Not so long ago we were victorious against India and now we were completely outplayed in all three departments by Bangladesh.

“The inconsistency in the way we perform as a unit is the worry,” Bavuma admitted.