Ken Borland

The Proteas have passed the test of their character and fighting spirit when put under pressure, especially after losing the first Test, coach Mark Boucher said after South Africa sealed an epic 2-1 series win over India in the third Test at Newlands on Friday.

Chasing a testing target of 212, South Africa won by seven wickets thanks to three successive half-century partnerships between Dean Elgar (30), man of the series Keegan Petersen (82), Rassie van der Dussen (41*) and Temba Bavuma (32*).

Having been beaten so thoroughly by the world’s No.1-ranked side in the first Test at Centurion, it was a remarkable comeback by a team that is still in transition.

“The team showed great character and fight, but that did not surprise me because Dean Elgar is a captain that leads from the front and Temba Bavuma too,” Boucher said after his biggest triumph as coach.

“That fight showed in Dean and Temba’s batting as well, so the guys will certainly follow that. When you have real fighters like that as leaders, then that will probably be the character of the team as well.

“This is a team that is on its own mission and it is a special, driven changeroom to be in. It’s fantastic that the results are starting to come in now. There were lots of ebbs and flows in the last two Tests.

“But we played those pressure moments pretty well and if we lost a session, we didn’t lose it too badly so we were still in the game. We are playing good pressure-cricket at the moment,” Boucher said.

As the new-look Test side’s most notable triumph, the players are going to take away enormous confidence and belief from what is one of the best results for South African cricket sine the return from isolation.

“It was a really hard-fought series, and certainly one of the best, top-five, we’ve ever had in South Africa,” Boucher said. “We lost all three tosses and lots of people wrote us off after the first day of the first Test.

“But we need to see this result through the perspective of where this team is and where India, probably the best team in the world, are. Our youngsters will take a lot of confidence from this.

“There’s nothing like winning games when you know you’ve had to play very, very hard Test cricket. But our feet are firmly on the ground and we know we are not the finished product.

“But from where this team has come from, in terms of the on and off-field stuff, they have been through a lot as a unit. But we have had solid chats and we are a close-knit group that has worked very hard,” Boucher said.

For Duanne Olivier, Monday’s first day of the second Test against India felt like “a new debut” and he gave credit to his fellow pacemen for their efforts in helping to turn a slow start into ultimately a successful opening day for the Proteas as they bowled the tourists out for just 202.

Olivier missed the first Test as he built himself back to peak conditioning following a bout of Covid, but on Monday he was back sharing the new ball with Kagiso Rabada, playing Test cricket for the first time since February 2019, when he took a Kolpak contract in England.

But things did not go well in the first hour for either Olivier, whose first four erratic overs went for 18 runs, or South Africa, as India reached 36/0.

But the drinks break helped the Proteas focus their effort and thereafter they squeezed India and claimed 10 wickets in 49 overs. Olivier and Rabada took three wickets each and young Marco Jansen claimed the other four; Lungi Ngidi bowled as well as any of them but ended with 0/26 in 11 overs.

“It felt like a new debut for me and I was very nervous,” Olivier admitted. “But we just wanted to try and have good energies and put pressure on the batsmen. Lungi and Marco did a superb job to create that pressure.

“And then the whole unit did it. It was a good day for the bowling unit as a whole. We would have taken 202 all out any day. The message from the coach was to stick to the basics and our processes and then reap the rewards.

“Lungi bowled exceptionally well but did not get the rewards, it was just one of those days for him. I am still trying to bowl fuller at good pace, but a couple of balls were too floaty. I will try to do better in the second innings,” Olivier said.

The Proteas batsmen then reached 35/1 at stumps and Olivier is optimistic they can cash in on the second day.

“If we want to be hyper-critical then we probably gave India 20-30 too many runs. The pitch is a bit different to how it is in domestic cricket, there’s not as much grass. It is harder and it will speed up.

“It was very hot today and it will start deteriorating in the second innings and then it might spin. We are 1-0 down, that is the reality, and of course we want to win the series.

“But as a team we can’t look too far ahead, otherwise our focus is not where it needs to be and you can get distracted. Tomorrow is a new day and we will break our processes down into smaller bits,” Olivier said.

The Social Justice and Nation-Building Report released on Wednesday not only claims the appointments of CSA director of cricket Graeme Smith and Proteas head coach Mark Boucher were irregular but also alludes to “racial discrimination” on their behalves.

Despite these highly-damaging accusations, Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza’s report concludes with admissions that “it cannot make definite findings”, “there was no process in place for testing the submissions” and that his recommendations and findings are “merely tentative”.

Smith’s appointment as Director of Cricket in December 2019 was labelled as “flawed” because South Africa’s most successful captain was headhunted for the position, a common practice in the corporate world. He was initially approached by former CEO Thabang Moroe, who was soon after dismissed by CSA for numerous incidents of maladministration, but still had the gall to criticise Smith’s appointment at the SJN.

The fact that Smith did not want to work under Moroe or former Board president Chris Nenzani, both of whom have left their posts under a cloud, was described as “racial bias against Black management”. The report makes no mention of the fact that Smith has continued to work under Black African Acting CEO Pholetsi Moseki and generic Black board president Lawson Naidoo since then with no issues.

Smith’s subsequent appointment of “his friend” Boucher as head coach was also stated to be an example of “unfair discirimination” based on race, because he was chosen ahead of Enoch Nkwe, who was the interim head coach.

The report lists Boucher’s five franchise trophies in three seasons as coach of the Titans, but then compares them, as equivalents, with two second-tier titles in the Netherlands, a Cubs Week triumph, three amateur cups with the Gauteng Strikers and three franchise titles won by Nkwe. No mention is made of South Africa’s three heavy defeats under Nkwe in India on their previous assignment.

Despite Boucher’s immense international playing experience, it concludes that the record-breaking wicketkeeper/batsman was appointed due to the colour of his skin.

Ex Proteas bowler and KZN Coastal coach Roger Telemachus, who has never led a franchise team, was also ruled to have been discriminated against.

The relatively new board will now have to extricate themselves from a dangerous situation in terms of legal liability, with an initiative set up by the previous board making serious allegations which have already attracted the interest of several affected parties’ lawyers.

Numerous people found to have engaged in racist conduct by the report are believed to have received no notice that they had been implicated, and at least one leading lawyer has sent a 17-page e-mail to the CSA Board warning that the report is seriously flawed in legal terms.

For now, the CSA directors are Out of Office, but they will have to grapple with the SJN issue in the new year.

Their troubles overseas may have caused a slight fissure in the Bulls’ confidence and coach Jake White said on Wednesday that their crunch United Rugby Championship match against the Sharks in Durban on Friday night will be a real examination of how good the Currie Cup champions really are away from home.

The Bulls have been well-nigh unbeatable at Loftus Versfeld, but they won just one of their four URC matches in the UK and they were beaten by the Sharks in their last visit to Kings Park, in the Currie Cup in August. White is also expecting the Sharks to field many of their nine current Springboks.

“It’s going to be almost like playing an international team with nine Springboks, a Scottish international in Dylan Richardson, and Samoan (OJ Noa) and Australian (Ben Tapuai) Test players,” White said on Wednesday.

“So it’s a massive game for us against the strongest possible Sharks team, and it’s away from home. It’s not just another local derby because it comes on the back of two Currie Cup finals we won against them.

“It’s going to be a massive test of whether we are good enough to win away from home against a star-studded team, a great opportunity to see how good we are. This one is different, it has added spice.

“So the buzz at training this week has been a little like before a Test match and that comes on its own before a massive challenge. Everyone wants to have a crack at those players,” White said.

While White gave his players three weeks off upon their return from Britain because the mental stress of playing so much rugby in Covid bubbles was beginning to tell, he said they have been hard at work since then rectifying some of the areas in which they were exposed on their tour.

“We learnt a lot on tour with different players coming up against you. We thought we were in a good place after the Currie Cup only to find things that really needed to be looked at in our game.

“The breakdown was one, both attacking and in defence, and in terms of attack, we need to develop as a team, we can’t stay in the same groove, we need to work on how we want to use the players in our team.

“The athletic ability of all the players overseas was an eye-opener, their footwork and handling skills. You think you have them cornered and then their skills get them out of the hole.

“The body shapes and abilities of the players overseas was a bit different to what we’re used to and the refereeing was different too – subtleties in defence and attack that would probably be blown here,” White said.