South African cricket needed that. A win.
A win is lekker. Winning Test matches is something that has been all too rare for the Proteas recently.
The players will tell you that every win is special, but that win against New Zealand at Centurion in four days is one they will look back on and view as a new beginning.
It was interesting listening to Dale Steyn speak after the match about how the team seemed lost after last year’s defeat in the World Cup semi-final. The players doubted their worth, they struggled for motivation, they struggled for form and consistency. They struggled.
We’d all imagined the heavy toll that loss at Eden Park took on all of them. The tears that night told as much.
Frustration and anger boiled into the public realm about the selection fiasco that unfolded in the hours before the toss of that semi-final.
A void developed between Cricket SA’s administrators and the players.
They needed to, as stand-in captain Faf du Plessisremarked ‘find our passion again’.
The brief period spent together before the first Test against New Zealand now seems to have been a significant one.
There, players and the coaching staff could look each other in the eye and say ‘stuff what happens outside of this circle, we work and play for each other and for the public’.
It was an important step in a team seeking to forge a renewed identity while retaining the values and culture that made them so successful between 2007 and 2014.
“The players kind of know what we are playing for again, where we want to go,” said Steyn.
The destination is a return to the No 1 spot in the world.
The understanding is, that they are a new team, no longer the team of Graeme Smith, Mark Boucher and Jacques Kallis.
There are new heroes, Temba Bavuma, Quinton de Kock and Kagiso Rabada looking to establish their own credentials as Test players and Protea stars.
For too much of last year that wasn’t the case and to make that distinction is important. It helps them to understand their own strengths and limitations and armed with that knowledge they can reignite the passion which Du Plessis talked about.
Sterner tests await -Australia later this year and trips to New Zealand and England in 2017 - but the victory at SuperSport Park has provided them with an important foundation.
They need not approach Australia and the three Tests there with trepidation.
As Steyn said, in two years they could well script a great story. - The Star