Winning a Test series away from home has never been easy. Admittedly South Africa may be called a team in transition. But the same might be said of England.
After losing the First Test, England went into the second with the youngest and least experienced XI they have fielded for a long time. Dominic Sibley, Zac Crawley, Ollie Pope and Dom Bess hadn’t played a dozen Tests between them. Sam Curran has played more, but is still only twenty-one. Only four of the team in that game had made Test centuries: Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Stuart Broad – the last two only one each, and Broad’s was a long time ago. If by the end of the series England were in full command and looked much the better side, that wasn’t how it had appeared a few weeks previously.
