WELLINGTON (Reuters) – South Africa arrived in New Zealand on a high note after a hard-fought home win against India but a punishing loss in their first Test against New Zealand in Christchurch on Saturday brought served as a sobering reality check.

Captain Dean Elgar refused to make excuses, blaming neither the loss of the draw, the 10-day quarantine on arrival in New Zealand, nor head coach Mark Boucher’s affair with a disciplinary hearing in May for accusations of racism.

“Being a touring party we’re always going to be up against home conditions and rightfully so,” Edgar said of having to strike first on a Hagley Oval pitch which had nice grass cover and offered plenty of help to the ever-relentless Blackcaps. ‘ rhythm of attack.

“If the shoe was on the other foot, we would have liked to use it to our strength.”

Fly-half Edgar contributed just one run from two hits, but he wasn’t the only one to fail with the bat, with no South African batsman even tallying 50 runs.

The top four hitters combined for a measly 45 runs.

Without a specialized spinner, the bowling attack sometimes lacked penetration, although the sloppy pitch and numerous lost strikes made matters worse.

“We were totally dominated by classy New Zealand attire in all three departments of the game,” said Edgar, who acknowledged that the pre-test lockdown as required by government COVID-19 regulations was far from complete. to be ideal.

“It would have been nice to have played a warm-up game, but… we are a professional team and at the end of the day we have to shoot before the day of the match.

“We have to follow New Zealand rules and regulations.”

And the Boucher situation was not a distraction, he insisted.

“As a group, we’ve been working on this and we’ve sort of solved it already. I don’t see that as an excuse in our camp.

South Africa have never lost a Test series to New Zealand and must win the second game of the short two-Test encounter to avoid that fate.

The match begins on the same ground on Friday, giving South Africa a few days to figure out how to improve against a team that is not the reigning world champion by chance.

“Why we were lacking in that intensity department, I’m still trying to figure out,” Edgar said.

“We should be a lot more competitive there. We have achieved a lot over the past few months as a unit and it is clear that what we have produced over the past few days is not a reflection of us as a team.

(Reporting by Andrew Both in Ballarat, Australia; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)