The most important benefit of the 2-0 series win over Bangladesh was the boost in confidence, says Proteas captain Faf du Plessis.

Basking in another overwhelming performance, in which the Proteas won by an innings and 254 runs, he said: ‘I am very happy with that: it was a very clinical performance and gives us consistency after the first Test.

‘After England [where the Proteas lost 3-1 by some big margins], we set ourselves some challenges. From a batting point of view we wanted some convincing performances and some big hundreds; from the bowlers we wanted them to be quick and aggressive. And we did those well.’

The captain took a lot of confidence from the performance of the ‘second tier’ bowlers, standing in for the likes of Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Chris Morris and Vernon Philander.

‘It was really good to see what skill sets these guys have, and they stepped. I was really impressed with Duanne [Olivier]. He bowled 10 overs of bouncers, and that takes a lot of energy. He didn’t get the rewards, but he did a great job.

That was a view endorsed by coach Ottis Gibson. ‘I was really impressed with him,’ he said. ‘I know we ask bowlers for line and length, but sometimes you need raw pace and aggression and he did that really well.’

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