JOHANNESBURG – There was no sense of relief for Mark Boucher after South Africa’s first Test series win away from home in four years on Monday evening.
The Proteas coach has been under pressure following a period in which the team’s results have tendered more towards the negative. That he has had to deal with a team that was in the midst of radical transition, was of little defence for him. Then before the team left for the Caribbean, Cricket SA’s Director of Cricket, Graeme Smith appeared to apply some more pressure saying the tour to the West Indies and the weeks following it were “a crucial period for the players and management.”
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However having secured the series win on Monday, and seen big improvements in several areas, most notably the performances of senior players and the team’s fielding, rather than reflect on his own feelings, Boucher was keener to highlight the hard work that had gone in behind the scenes, the efforts of new captain Dean Elgar and to look ahead.
“We’ve spoken about playing the 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,” said Boucher.
Elgar, Quinton de Kock, Keshav Maharaj and Kagiso Rabada, the team’s most senior players were all influential, providing the on-field leadership that has been missing in the last few months. For Elgar in particular, the series victory was special, as it came in his first series in charge.
He has sought to be as unfussy as possible, demanding no more of the players than they feel they can give, but holding them accountable for their performances. Much has been made of him calling for the side to play “boring cricket,” but Boucher said the use of that phrase didn’t represent a stylistic approach for the Proteas.
“Dean might say boring, we might say it is disciplined cricket,” Boucher remarked. “The language he has been speaking has been resonating with the players, so good on him for bringing that language.”
Test cricket, as the South Africans would like to play it, involves absorbing pressure and when appropriate, applying it back on the opposition, said Boucher. “ Another plus is that the guys are becoming smarter at choosing those moments - of when to absorb and when to apply pressure. If you want to call it boring, at certain stages you have to be, but what is impressive for me is that at certain points we could really drive the nail in during this series and we did that with batting and bowling. It’s good to see a leader sending out a language and the guys responding to it, that’s important.”
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Boucher and all the players have recognised that the first Test series win away from home was significant, partly for the outcome itself, but more for what it might do for them in the future.
“There were some hard conversations we had before we left (South Africa),” he commented. “‘Where is the state of our cricket? Where are we as a unit? The guys really want to start playing for each other again. We saw that.”
Boucher explained that the next step is to sustain what they did in the West Indies. “It's important that we carry on with that and understand it is a process. You can’t become the no.1 team in the world overnight, this is a long process that we have to keep working on - from a skill perspective, from being smarter and from a confidence perspective.”
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“It’s going good at the moment. I’m looking forward to when we get put under pressure and see how we respond as a unit. That is where we can really judge where we are.”
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