JOHANNESBURG. – AB de Villiers admitted after a crushing series defeat by England that his South African team no longer deserved their ranking as the leading Test cricket side in the world.

Was it the end of an era, the new South African captain was asked after his side were beaten inside three days by England in the third Test at the Wanderers Stadium on Saturday.

“It’s not the same side any more,” he said. “It’s a difficult question. We’re still up there in the rankings but that means absolutely nothing. Our form of late has been pretty poor and it will take something special to turn it around. We’re a little bit offbeat at the moment, that’s for sure.”

South Africa have been among the leading sides in Test cricket for most of the past decade and had held the official number one ranking since defeating England at Lord’s in 2012.

They have not won a Test match since the New Year game against a weak West Indies side last year.

Since then they have lost five and drawn four Tests. Three of the defeats were in India on pitches which favoured spin bowlers and on which South Africa suffered a sequence of collapses.

The retirement of key players such as Jacques Kallis, Graeme Smith and Mark Boucher has been a factor, as have injuries to leading fast bowlers Dale Steyn and Vernon Philander.

South Africa is not alone in going through a rebuilding phase, however, with the end of a World Cup cycle — the most recent was in 2015 — typically leading to some leading players calling time on their careers.

Although fifth-ranked England also have a clutch of relatively inexperienced players, De Villiers admitted: “They’re definitely not the number five team in the world, they’re better than that. They’re a well-balanced team with lots of young players with a lot of talent. It looks like they’ve got a lot of maturity even though they’re young.”

The elephant in the room in South African cricket is the issue of race, or “transformation” as it is termed by Cricket South Africa.

There is constant political pressure for South African teams to reflect more closely the country’s demographics and there is a target of four “players of colour” in each side that takes the field.

There was major controversy about perceived interference in the selection of the South African one-day team for last year’s World Cup semi-final against New Zealand when the team management and selectors were reminded to “properly consider . . . transformation guidelines”. – AFP.

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