JOHANNESBURG - Hard work and hard talking - were the secrets to South Africa’s first Test series win away from home in four years, said the national men’s team’s head coach Mark Boucher.
“We sat around the fire in Pretoria (before the series),” Boucher remarked on Monday, following South Africa’s 158-run win against the West Indies in the second Test in St. Lucia which secured a 2-0 series triumph. “The new captain asked a couple of questions. ‘Where we are?’ ‘Where are we going?’ And, ’where do we want to be.’ Quite a few honest answers came out there, as they do around a South African fire at night.”
Many times those kinds of answers are not what people want to hear. In the case of the South African men’s national cricket team, no one shirked their responsibility.
“The guys all really bought into a process that (Dean Elgar) wanted to align his reign with. We are either on the bus or not on the bus and thankfully everyone just said they were on the bus,” said Boucher.
South Africa’s first away series win for four years was described as significant. A team that has been in the doldrums for the last few years, with players watching as administrative ineptitude took the sport to the brink of disaster, demanded better of themselves.
“We understand the importance of us performing again for the Proteas badge,” Boucher remarked.
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From the circle of fire in Pretoria to the nets in St.Lucia, the hard talking was followed by hard work. “I said it a long time ago, we were working on a few technical things, in terms of upskilling the players, and I think we got an insight into a lot of the hardwork that has gone in behind closed doors. I thought the guys really played well as a unit.”
While the margins of victory were comprehensive - an innings and 63-runs in the first Test and 158-runs in the second - it required plenty of hard work from all the players to achieve those outcomes. “There were a lot of individuals that came through that maybe didn’t get the runs they wanted but there were partnerships over the whole series that really counted, especially in tough conditions. We’ve spoken about playing bigger moments better and I think we did play those big moments very well. Every single player played a part to get us into a situation where we could win Tests. That’s the pleasing part for me,” Boucher added.
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While the team’s results in recent years have been poor, Boucher said the value of the lessons learned in those defeats couldn’t be underestimated. “There are things that have taken place over the last couple of months that have been quite tough on certain guys. We had some good chats; the team was prepared to move forward as a unit after that.”
“ We’ve not played a lot of cricket, because of Covid, especially away from home, understandably. I’ve always believed, when you’ve got a young team, that the best place for them to actually learn how to play is in foreign conditions. There were a lot of lessons learnt although we didn’t win in Pakistan. We came here and the players knew the conditions were going to be tough. We had some good practices before the series...this is how you develop players by playing them in different conditions. This is where they start learning about their games, making little adjustments to their games that will hopefully turn them into a world class player one day,” Boucher explained.
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