Rabada to play, South Africa look to 'get bloody better' in Australia Test series

South Africa’s head coach Shukri Conrad described his team’s loss to Australia as “neither a calamity nor a catastrophe,” but did say they “need to get bloody better” for the rest of the summer.

The Proteas lost the first Test to Australia by 214 runs in Durban on Tuesday and Conrad cautioned against overreacting.

“We just lost a Test match. It doesn’t mean you’ve now got to go soul-searching
and questioning all the things that we’ve done really well and are doing really well. We just need to get bloody better,” Conrad said.

The Kingsmead Test was South Africa’s first at home since winning the World Test Championship last June, with Temba Bavuma at the helm. It was also Bavuma’s first loss after 12 matches in charge.

Kagiso Rabada was ruled out of the first Test as he continues his recovery from a hamstring injury. According to Bavuma, Rabada sat out the first game “from a precautionary point of view”, and will be available for the second Test in Gqeberha from Sunday. Even Conrad lamented Rabada’s absence.

“It’s going to sound like an excuse,” he said, “but when your Rolls-Royce of fast bowlers is not available and you’ve got to fashion an attack…”

In Rabada’s absence, South Africa banked on their two frontline spinners, Keshav Maharaj and Simon Harmer. But it also compromised on the batting.

“This has been coming for a while,” Conrad said. “If you look at our performances back home, when there was something in the wicket (for the bowlers), against good attacks we’ve been heavily reliant on Temba and Aiden (Markram), and then lower-order runs,” Conrad said.

“You only need to go back to Centurion (where Rabada and Marco Jansen shared a ninth-wicket stand of 51 to successfully chase 148 against Pakistan), you go back to the final at Lord’s (where Markram and Bavuma led the chase against Australia), David (Bedingham) has obviously shown glimpses but we were always heavily reliant on lower-order runs.”

Uncapped batter Marques Ackerman could make the XI in the second Test, but Conrad also indicated that he could look outside the current squad for a middle-order batter.