If there hasn’t been a pronounced swagger as South Africa has marched around the Caribbean, there have at least been signs of purpose and direction. Winning the Test series with a game in hand and the one-dayers with two matches to spare is as much as anyone could have asked.
This was a team, remember, that when it left home was said to be unable to bowl anyone out twice. In Trinidad and in Barbados they managed this handsomely. No matter that former convener of selectors Omar Henry found time to sneer at their achievements, the South Africans have played smart, sharp cricket after an early fright in Guyana.
It’s worthwhile recalling that just 12 months ago South Africa were in-between an unsatisfactory trip to New Zealand and an even worse visit to Sri Lanka. Rumour had it at the time that the junior players in the squad held a meeting aimed at finding ways of persuading the senior players to pull their fingers out.
Whether this is true or not is irrelevant. The point is that the senior players weren’t providing the contributions required of them. The team was short on ideas, low on enthusiasm — and the results showed it.
What has changed since then is the coach, the make-up of the selection panel and the authority of the captain. Whatever anyone thinks of Ray Jennings — and he is a man who inspires a wide variety of opinions —the South Africans have played with far more wit and intelligence than was the case a year ago.
Graeme Smith, too, has taken another stride forward on this tour. Most obviously, he has learned the lesson of patience, both as a batsman and a captain. In the field the South Africans have waited for the moment to attack, and when they have it has been with ferocity.
Knowing when to wait and when to strike is largely an instinctive thing, and in the Caribbean Smith’s instincts have, for the most part, been reliable.
He’s got more right than wrong, a point underlined by the fact that between them the West Indies batsmen produced a triple century, a couple of double hundreds and two enthralling Brian Lara centuries — and yet had still lost the series by the third Test.
Smith has had impressive support, too. In the absence of Shaun Pollock, Makhaya Ntini led the attack by example. He started slowly in the first Test, but blew the West Indies away in Trinidad.
In some ways, there has been a little of Gary Kirsten in Ntini’s coming of age as a fast bowler in the sense that, like Kirsten, Ntini has accepted and worked within the limitations imposed on him by his technique. Where he was once one-dimensional, there is now craft and skill about his bowling. He may not be the next Allan Donald, but he’s most certainly established himself as his own Makhaya Ntini.
Andre Nel, too, has bowled better and snarled less to ensure that Smith has been able to attack from both ends when the moment has presented itself, while Charl Langeveldt showed himself to be a match-ÂÂwinner on Wednesday.
AB de Villiers has continued to grow into his role as Smith’s opening partner, Jacques Kallis was as solid as ever and even Boeta Dippenaar has greedily snatched at the chance of a comeback.
Even so, there will inevitably be questions asked about the standard of this West Indies team, even if their deterioration matched the progress of the South Africans.
At the end of the year wait the Australians, but before then lies a fascinating, and perhaps more revealing, measure of this South African team.
In October New Zealand visit South Africa. It is common cause that Stephen Fleming outwitted Smith last year but the South African will be 18 months older and wiser. He also has a team that appears to be on the rise and a selection policy that may not please everyone, but is at least coherent.
South Africa toured New Zealand last year as a team that still seemed to hanker after Jonty Rhodes and Donald and was about to lose the comforting presence of Kirsten. When Fleming and his Black Caps arrive here, however, they might well find themselves up against a team that has stopped looking backwards.