Dean Elgar says the senior Proteas players are trying to keep the players motivated ahead of the third and final Test.

It’s no secret that the Proteas have had a tough tour to India so far, following two huge losses in the subcontinent.

The loss of the first test match showed us signs of a fighting Proteas team.

The players gave us hope that they will be able to produce match-winning performances in the future with the inexperienced group of players we have.

But the manner in which we lost the second Test match was just disappointing, with only Keshav Maharaj and Vernon Philander showing a bit of a fight with the bat.

“It’s no secret that it’s been a bit of a challenging tour for us, we haven’t played our greatest cricket,” said Dean Elgar on Thursday.

“It’s always a good learning curve coming to India. You get stretched as a person, you get stretched as a cricketer. I think you get to know yourself quite a lot as a person.”

These losses can put quite a huge dent in the players’ confidence and sort of change the positive mentality in the group.

With the experience of Faf du Plessis, Elgar and Vernon Philander, the younger guys can feed off them to try to keep their heads held high and move on to try winning games for South Africa.

“We’re trying to keep positive, the senior players are trying to keep the guys motivated,” said Elgar.

“We’re still representing the country which is an immensely proud moment for each player and that still motivates everyone within our squad.”

The third Test match gets underway on Saturday and the boys will be looking to rectify their mistakes and get the 40 points they need to get the Test Championship campaign going.

“Hopefully (the batsmen can) score a lot of runs,” he said. “It’s going to be a challenge, especially in the second test we maybe forgot a few basic points that we did in the first Test.

“I think because we were challenged in the field. India knows how to stretch you as a team and they ultimately did that in the second test, as I mentioned we neglected our pointers going into our batting.

“Hopefully we can go back to the basics of the game and put up a good performance in the third Test.”