For someone who has the task of lifting his side to what would be one of the most improbable Test victories in history, South African captain Mark Boucher was remarkably chipper on the eve of the second Test match against Australia starting at Newlands on Friday.

The portents do not exactly favour the home team. Since mid-December Australia have won four crushing victories over South Africa with the last one at the Wanderers two weeks ago ending in the second-biggest margin of defeat in Test history. That was Boucher's introduction to Test captaincy.

Half of South Africa's prized new-ball pairing has retired, the other half is injured. In the place of Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock, Boucher will have to call on Makhaya Ntini (who will take the new ball in a Test match for only the second time in his career) and the untried Dewald Pretorius who plays his first Test match.

His number three batsman, Graeme Smith, is making his Test debut as is the all-rounder and first-change seamer Andrew Hall. The number six batsman, Ashwell Prince, is playing in his second Test match while the spinner, Paul Adams, has 96 Test wickets, but only five have been taken against Australia and those cost 60 runs apiece.

And if that were not enough, Boucher is not even the second-choice captain for this match. Daryll Cullinan would have led the side in the absence of Pollock, but he chose to walk away from the team after a short-lived contractual dispute which, in essence, consisted of Cullinan holding a gun to the United Cricket Board's head.

"Well," said Boucher, "it's in situations like this that history is made."

He has to say that, of course, but one thing immediately noticeable about the South African team is that they are by no means as despondent as you might have imagined.

Shortly after the South African practice at Newlands on Thursday, Herschelle Gibbs announced a new sponsorhip deal that will earn him R100 000 for having the logo of cellphone distributors Nashua Mobile emblazoned on the back of his bat.

During the announcement, it was pointed out to Gibbs that he had become one of South Africa's senior players. As he absorbed this information, it was asked of him whether this meant he would be getting to bed earlier.

"Sleeping's for dead people," he retorted. "If you sleep you die."

Despite the havoc caused in the South African team during the past two weeks, the home side may have one advantaged in that the new players have not been scarrred by Australia and, unlike Cullinan, they're absolutely thrilled to be playing at Newlands.

Even Steve Waugh conceded as much. "The opposition are dangerous because we don't know much about them," he said. "They've got three guys on debut which gives them an advantage."

How much of an advantage, of course, remains to be seen. Australia, with Shane Warne playing his 100th Test match, are overwhelming favourites and expect to win the series here in Cape Town. South Africa's ambitions, meanwhile, are now limited to being competitive. In other words, they'd like to try to take this one into a fifth day.

Still, as Boucher noted, it's situations like this in which history is made. And a South African victory at this stage of the summer would be a particularly historic event.

© CricInfo