Things are clicking in to place now with the team and it was great to win so convincingly in the first Test against New Zealand and give ourselves an extra day-off.

We were able to enjoy what was a hard-earned win and celebrate on Sunday evening before a rest day. We have a team golf event with our sponsors Castle Lager on Tuesday before we start switching on again for the second Test at Centurion.

It’s really pleasing that the things we have been working towards are now starting to come through. It takes three years to build a team and we now have a real good crop of young fast bowlers coming through. We have options, which is encouraging for us as a team.

We took a difficult decision with regards to (omitting) Shaun Pollock but there was always going to come a time when we had to look towards the future. Everybody is wondering what Polly is going to do with his career. We all still have a huge amount of respect for Polly and I'm sure there will be games where we will be grateful of his ability and experience.

(But) There are now young fast bowlers who are ready and it’s important that we use this time to blood them and give opportunities to them with tours of India and the UK approaching. There’s Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, and Makhaya and Andre Nel, while there’s Polly also. These options are great to have as a captain.  

There is also Paul Harris, who has added a new dimension to our game. He is an attacking bowler and allows us to get fielders around the bat whether in the sub-continent or at home. However he also has the ability, if the ball is going around the park, to bowl defensively and allow us to put the brakes on at one end and have three seamers bowling quick at the other end. I don’t think I’ve ever played Test cricket when we have had these added options.

I would like to think that our pace attack, which is being spearheaded by young Dale Steyn, has the capabilities to emulate the days of a decade ago when we had Allan Donald, Fanie de Villiers, a young Shaun Pollock, Brian McMillan etc. I was talking to one of our sponsor rep's recently and he was saying he thought we were getting back to those days. Everybody can see that the talent and potential is there. How we use these players and help them to progress to the next level will be the next challenge.

I was pleased for Dale Steyn that he took his first ten-wicket match haul for the man of the match award. He’s quick and, though he’s not the tallest guy around, he bowls consistently at 145kmh and sometimes 150. But pace is not everything with Dale as he also swings the ball.

He has started well this season and he is benefiting from a run in the side and his confidence has gone through the roof. The emergence of Morne Morkel has pushed him to work even harder, which is what you want throughout the team. Even in the batting we are now seeing Boeta Dippenaar and Neil McKenzie pushing for places again. No player should take their place for granted.

In terms of this series with New Zealand, I am sure they will want to come back hard in the second Test and would be disappointed if they didn’t show a bit more intensity and get a few more more bigger partnerships going, but I would say that when you have a team on the ropes, things tend to go your way. We’ve been on the back foot in games as well. The wicket was tough to bat on and we had the line-up to exploit the conditions with the extra pace.

Centurion is a ground where I have had a lot of success in ODI’s but recently the wickets haven’t been as good. It would be nice if our wickets were more like the Gabba, which we have just seen in Australia, when there was pace, bounce and a good contest between bat and ball.

Finally, although I missed out at The Wanderers, my own game is in real good order and it feels as good as it was in 2003 and 2004 when I was really feeling in control of my game. I have worked on a few things on and off the field.

That hundred I scored in Pakistan meant a lot to me as I had grown up on South African pitches and haven’t played a great deal in the sub-continent so to have scored a century out there and won the series was a great boost. When you haven’t made three figures for a while it’s easy to forget the stages you go through on your way to a hundred so now, when I get a start, I want to cash in and make the most of it.