‘We almost played the perfect Test’ – du Plessis

South Africa are a happy team again. Not just because they beat New Zealand but because they’ve rediscovered their reason.

“We’ve found our passion again and why we want to win games,” Faf du Plessis said. “The team space is good and that reflects directly on our performances.”

The reason did not get lost in the retirements of great players like Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher. It did not get lost in the complex off-field affairs that dominate every sphere of life in a country still coming to terms with its past as it lurches into the future. It did not get lost in the five Tests they lost last summer across two series. It got lost before that, at the 2015 World Cup.

“After the World Cup, we just stopped,” Dale Steyn admitted.

Literally. On the night of the semi-final, the core of the South African squad was on the floor. Steyn, du Plessis and Morne Morkel were among those that had to be helped up. Something broke that night and, as we are now discovering, it was the South African spirit. “We didn’t know why we wanted to win games. We needed something to happen,” Steyn said.

The something was the season of discontent that followed and the honest discussion that took place after that about exactly what was needed to heal, in all formats. “We felt we needed to improve again. We couldn’t rest on our laurels as the previous Test team did because with this team we are not good enough to do that yet,” du Plessis said.

The previous team – the one of Smith, Kallis and Boucher – had become so good that they managed to win, or not lose, pretty much everywhere. …

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