Proteas captain Faf du Plessis refuses to be drawn into debate about the form of batsman Temba Bavuma and others during the ongoing Test series against England.

Bavuma was dropped from the XI for the second Test at Newlands in Cape Town, but has been retained for this week’s third at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth.

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Du Plessis, meanwhile, has not scored a Test century in over a year – and managed a mere 69 runs in four innings in this series so far.

‘You are used to it. When you have played international cricket for as long I have, it comes with media for you and media against you. And to read to much into it, for and against – it’s really important for any player not to get sucked into it too much,’ said Du Plessis.

‘I am not getting in a battle with myself and Temba over who plays and who doesn’t. My performances also need to go up in terms of scoring. Temba has been put in a position where he needs to score runs to get back into the team and if he does that, he will.’

The Proteas have debuted all-rounder Dwaine Pretorius, opener Pieter Malan and middle-order batsman Rassie van der Dussen in Test cricket since the 3-0 series drubbing by India last year.

‘For a very young team to have put in performances that we have in the last two Tests, shows really good signs. From where we were in India, as a team, very low on confidence, we have shown huge steps in the right direction to become the team that we need to be,’ added Du Plessis.

‘It does not happen overnight. Things like this will take time. We need to get some caps under our players, we need to get some experience and in a year or two’s time, hopefully this team would have made the increase in performances and could challenge to be in the top three in the world.’

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