Chronicle Editor
SOUTH AFRICA skipper Faf du Plessis was a relieved man after his team beat England by 107 runs in the first test at SuperSport Park in Centurion yesterday.
The Proteas bowlers delivered a masterclass with the ball to trigger a collapse in the afternoon session as England lost seven wickets to be bowled out for 268 with more than a day to spare.
Du Plessis’s team have had a tough time of it in the last year, losing a home series to Sri Lanka and then getting thumped 3-0 away in India.
But the captain was pleased his team were able to claim their first 30 points of the ICC World Test Championship.
“Yes, we need that,” said Du Plessis. “Obviously, the last couple of months as a test team have been tough. But we worked really hard in the week and in the build-up to the test.
“I thought it was a very, very good test match with two teams fighting really hard all the way. Today’s effort was incredible with our bowlers making sure we could keep that rate down all the time and then the wickets came at the end.”
Set 375 for an unlikely victory, England were still in it coming back from lunch at 171 for three but in the end, it was the raw pace of Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Norjte that undid them.
Rabada claimed four second-innings wickets while Nortje took a career-best three, including that of England captain Joe Root for 48.
“I thought Anrich Nortje was really good. We expect that from KG, he’s a world-class performer for us. But Anrich, in his first test at home . . . he’s probably not someone you would think has got a lot of control.
“We know he’s got a lot of pace but I thought he bowled with great control and executed the right lengths to different batsmen.
“It’s real good signs for the test team moving forward.”
With Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla all having retired, South Africa are in a building phase and Du Plessis said the victory over England was a great building block for his elated camp.
“We haven’t won a test match in a while. For us, it’s the start of a new chapter. We want to make sure we improve as a team. As a test team again we want to go up to better things again and this is just the start. We know it’s going to be a long journey to get there. But we’ll make sure we keep working hard.”
Root said he was pleased with how his team performed despite the sickness that crippled the camp leading up to and during the test.
“Yeah, it’s been a really tough week off the field. Pretty much everything has been thrown at the group. We had 10 guys go down unwell throughout the week or in the build-up to the week.
“Credit to everyone, they stood up and tried to put in the best performance possible and at no stage did they let anyone down.”
“We were fully confident we could chase those runs down. We just knew that it was going to take one or two reasonable partnerships and we needed to negotiate the new ball very well. But credit to South Africa, they bowled really well.”
The second test will be played at Newlands in Cape Town starting 3 January. — SuperSport
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