Flashback 2003

South Africa play England in the first Test at Lord's on Thursday and iafrica.com's Barend Prins asked former national coach Eric Simons to share his experiences of the 2003 tour to England.

What went right during the tour in 2003:

"We got input from many cricketers that knew conditions intimately and passed on that advice in a camp we held. We had a young squad with a strong self-belief that through youthful attitude wanted to make a statement. Englishman Mike Finnigan did amazing work with the squad after the one-day series and developed real self-belief and desire to make this statement. Mike had worked with Sam Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers and is now with David Moyes at Everton."

Where it went wrong:

"Ultimately, we could not handle the pressure when it came down to the wire in the final Test. A team should never score 480 in the first innings and lose the way we did at The Oval. England did not win the last Test from that position — we lost it. In some ways we were the victims of our own success as we scored the runs in 128 overs which meant the match moved on very quickly — so by lunch on the second day we were virtually bowling already whereas 484 would previously take you till at least tea, and then the time factor makes it difficult for team batting second to come back."

Prins also caught up with Jonty Rhodes and asked him who he thought would be South Africa's performers on this tour.

"Obviously Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis are very important for us. Graeme has played some County cricket now and scores his runs very quickly. Neil is batting out of position a bit, but he is very experienced. Hashim (Amla) gives us something different, as he isn't really a 'South African' batsman. He is much wristier than any of our other batsmen, which gives the team something different. AB de Villiers is another to look out for. Ashwell (Prince) is probably the only one of our batsmen that hasn't scored much in the last series or two. All of our top six can score big scores though, which is something we've not had before."

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