Proteas captain Temba Bavuma says reaching the World Test Championship final wasn’t an easy feat for his team.

South Africa drew a home series 1-1 with then No-1 ranked India, before suffering a 2-0 series loss in New Zealand after controversially selecting a weakened squad without SA20 players.

Since then, the Proteas have won series against Bangladesh (away), the West Indies (away) and Sri Lanka (home), and are leading their two-match home series against Pakistan 1-0.

South Africa haven’t faced Australia or England during this period, though, leading some to say that they don’t deserve to be in June’s final at Lord’s.

“I definitely don’t believe it was an easy ride to get to this point,” Bavuma said on Thursday, ahead of the second Test against Pakistan, which starts on Friday.

“We played against New Zealand with a not-so-strong team, and from then onwards, we’ve pretty much won our games from that point; I don’t think that’s an easy feat by any imagination. Those are games we won at home and also away. We take a lot of pride in what we achieved as a team.”

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The Proteas will also only play 12 Tests in this WTC cycle, compared to 22 for England and 19 for each of India and Australia.

“We don’t come up with the scheduling,” Bavuma said. “We’d love to play a lot more games like the other [big] three countries around the world.

“Hopefully, with the way that we have performed, there will be more matches that will come our way. We just do what we can as a team. We have tried to play good cricket, and all the good cricket we played got us to the point we are at.

“So, I think for us as players, it’s not for us to get involved in those negative sentiments being passed on by past players. Ours is to play cricket and do our best.”

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