Ken Borland

Triumphant Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus said Argentina are a tough side to crack and his team had to first make them soft up front, setting up their emphatic 48-7 win in Mbombela, which also sealed the Rugby Championship title for South Africa.

Although the Springboks scored seven tries, four of them going to backs, the platform for victory, following their 29-28 defeat in Argentina last weekend, was laid up front. South Africa utterly dominated the scrums and won all 10 of their lineouts.

“The manner we are trying to play may be more attacking, but we still want to be physical, have scrum dominance and our lineout worked very well tonight too. It made them tired trying to stop our tight five all the time, it was a bit like slow poison.

“It was a learning school for us last week, but I didn’t expect that sort of scoreline tonight because Argentina are very difficult to play against. Things were really tight in the beginning and they kept us out. But we didn’t want to stand back, it was all about temperament and leadership for us.

“We’ve used 35 players in the Rugby Championship, but for those crunch games it’s the older heads who pull us through. It was not spectacular by us, but we showed good intent. Argentina are physical, nippy and great on attack. Jerry Flannery [defence coach] was very nervous before the game but we kept them to just one try.

“We were gutsy enough, we played brilliantly at stages, much better than we did against them that side. It wasn’t perfect, but there was some really good stuff to build on,” Erasmus said after South Africa won the Rugby Championship for the first time since 2019.

While Argentina were able to keep the dominant Springboks out for the first eight minutes, they were unable to keep in touch thereafter as South Africa romped to a 27-7 lead at halftime.

“The heartbreak is because of how we lost,” Pumas coach Felipe Contepomi said. “We were never able to be the team we wanted to be, and then it becomes very hard when you play a team that has won the World Cup twice. They were better than us from minute one to 80 and that’s the story.

“I recognise that our players kept battling hard and working to get back, but we did not do what we wanted to do, especially in terms of defence. It is disappointing but it is part of learning – how to be better when under pressure. You need to stay poised and believe in what you’ve done in training,” Contepomi said.

Kyle Verreynne, South Africa’s leading run-scorer in the series so far, did not hide away from the fact that the Proteas suffered soft dismissals on the opening day of the second Test against Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, but he said the tourists’ batsmen were still in a positive frame of mind.

South Africa were bundled out for just 189 on Monday, with Verreynne (52) and Marco Jansen (59) scoring the bulk of those runs in a sixth-wicket stand of 112. Although both of them were caught behind the wicket in successive overs from Cameron Green, edging deliveries outside off-stump, their dismissals were far from soft in comparison to some of their colleagues.

After being sent in to bat, South Africa’s initial collapse from 56 for one to 67 for five had been triggered by Theunis de Bruyn’s wild pull shot and captain Dean Elgar’s crazy run out. Sarel Erwee and Khaya Zondo were both caught off drives that were over-ambitious and poorly executed, while Keshav Maharaj and Kagiso Rabada, who have scored valuable runs for the Proteas in the past, were both out to poor strokes.

“In our last few innings, we’ve been getting out to a lot of good balls and the bowlers have really stuck to their plans, but today there were more soft dismissals, which was the disappointing thing,” Verreynne said after passing fifty for the third time in his 13 Tests.

“But behind closed doors, our batsmen are in a good space and we’ve been having really positive conversations. We know we have to make sure the top six puts the runs on the board and we can’t rely on our lower-order to do it.

“We put pressure on Australia with the ball in the last innings in Brisbane, so we have a lot of confidence that our bowlers can do the job. But it’s a pity that we rely so much on them.

“It would be nice for the batsmen to put a good target on the board for them for a change. But you have to give credit to the Australian bowlers, we had a big partnership and put pressure on them, but they stuck at it,” Verreynne said.

With far less conventional movement on offer than in Brisbane, cross-seam deliveries were one of the vehicles the home attack used to great effect on Monday. None more so than Green, who claimed a career-best five for 27 in 10.4 overs.

“A couple of overs before myself and Marco were dismissed, they started to go cross-seam in order to rough up one side of the ball and it felt like it was just tailing in a bit,” Verreynne said. “Not too much was happening for them, so credit to them for trying something.

“Green is a bit different to the other bowlers because he is so tall, so he gets bounce and he has the ability to shape the ball, as does Mitchell Starc.

“But Green has that bit extra and they use him in short bursts so he brings a lot of energy. It’s a luxury Australia have, so the batsmen have to make sure they’re switched on against him,” Verreynne said.

Mark Boucher is never going to be soft and cute and adorable like a llama, it’s just not his personality and he probably would not have been a great cricketer if he had been. As a coach, the players I have spoken to appreciate his straight-talking approach, but also say he is amazing at encouraging and growing cricketers.

Those coaching qualities have now been recognised on arguably the greatest international stage of all as he was announced on Friday as the Mumbai Indians’ new IPL head coach. Mumbai is not just India’s largest, richest city, it is also home to the IPL’s most successful franchise, having lifted the cup a record five times since 2013.

Boucher may yet turn out to be the prophet not recognised in his home town, but any unbiased examination of his three-year term in charge of the Proteas would acknowledge the tremendous strides the team has made since the utter shambles of 2019.

Yet it seems the most prolific wicketkeeper in the history of the international game still cannot win when it comes to certain segments of South African cricket.

His announcement that he would be moving on from the Proteas job after the T20 World Cup in Australia next month was greeted in some quarters by criticism that, having fought tooth and nail to stay in the job, he was now giving it up a year before his contract expires.

This is most unfair, but par for the course when it comes to criticising Boucher, who for some reason attracts a lot of illogical hatred.

The reason Boucher fought so hard to stay Proteas coach was not so much for the job, but because he was rightfully spitting mad that he was about to be fired for scurrilous allegations of racism. There can surely be no greater stain on a White South African’s name than being called racist?

So Boucher was pilloried for trying to clear his name – justice did prevail in that regard – and now gets accused of leaving the Proteas in the lurch.

Boucher knows that unless he wins a World Cup between now and the end of next year, he was never going to have his contract renewed. While there are much nicer people in charge at Cricket South Africa these days, there is still a significant lobby from the old guard that continues to infect the structures. There are still loud anti-Boucher voices, as we have seen his week.

So when the option to become a head coach in the most lucrative cricket league comes around, who in their right mind would not take it? Mumbai Indians have been through a lean spell over the last couple of years, so Boucher will be under pressure to get results. But it will strictly be pressure based on what happens on the field, and not the sort of political sideshows he had to deal with in South Africa.

That will be for his successor at the Proteas to now handle and there are good candidates waiting in the aisles.

There had been speculation that Boucher would land up in Cape Town as the head coach of the new Mumbai Indians franchise that is playing in the SA20. Given the amount of ill-feeling towards him that festers in that city, that would have been an intriguing turn of events.

It was interesting to hear Joburg Super Kings coach Eric Simons say this week that T20 has become the most tactical format of the game, the one that requires the most thinking. That flies in the face of some perceptions that it is just a bunch of gym bunnies trying to smash the ball out of the ground all the time.

Likewise, Boucher is perhaps misperceived as this hard-nosed coach who shouts at the players and believes in his way or the highway. In fact, the best work Boucher has done with the Proteas has probably been around freeing up their mindsets, encouraging them to think out of the box and pursue new strategies.

He seems a great fit for the IPL and I will be watching his progress with great interest.

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.