Are we witnessing South Africa's greatest era?

They've had periods of amazing success going back to more than a century, but there's something different now.

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Over the last couple of years, South Africa have been travelling around the world and just kicking ass. Their 2-0 series sweep against India is obviously causing all sorts of problems for Indian fans, but let’s look at this from a South African point of view. It’s just another success. If you look at the last few years, that’s all they’ve been doing: going around and being successful.

Coming into the second Test in Guwahati, RushLine AI suggested that South Africa had a 30% chance of winning it, which I think is a fairly normal and respectable figure. Even considering India’s recent form. But not for the first time - or even the second or the third - South Africa completely obliterated realistic expectations of them.

Are we living in the greatest ever era of South African cricket?

I think for most people, when they think about South Africa being a really good side, they go back to that Graeme Smith era. That’s the one that really changes everything.

We’ve worked that out as December 2006 through to Jan 2015. In that period, their Test record is absolutely bananas. They play 29 series and have only two losses. It really was an incredible period where they were even better away from home than they were on their own pitches. They were just a machine when it came to men’s Test cricket.

However, if we’re looking at South Africa’s best-ever era, don’t we also have to think about the women’s side as well? And it turns out in this era, the women were not particularly good. In fact, the women’s side from 2000 to 2014 just sort of dropped away from the best teams. They had never really shown that they were up there, but at least in 2000 they had made a semi-final. After that, they didn’t really do anything till they qualified for the T20 World Cup semi-final in 2014. They were very, very ordinary for a long period of time.

When we look at the men’s ODI and T20I teams in that period: they did very well in bilaterals. But every time they had to go to a World Cup, they consistently did not do particularly well.

So if we call the 2006-2014 span a great period for South African cricket, it’s kind of putting all the emphasis on the fact that they were really good at one thing. And not just really good, they were great at that one thing. They had one of the best Test teams that has ever existed. However, they were pretty ordinary at everything else.

Let’s go back a little bit further. In fact, let’s go back to a Test team that Cricket South Africa don’t even claim as one of their own.