How the elevation of Temba Bavuma unlocked a new dimension

If a book on South African cricket had to be penned down a couple of years ago, Temba Bavuma may have got no more than an honourable mention. He does have a poignant place in its tumultuous past, by virtue of shattering the glass ceiling as a black cricketer.

When he made his Test debut in 2014, he became the first black batter to play for the Proteas. In 2021, he became the first black captain of the men’s team, earning the responsibility in the shortest format. These are seminal landmarks in a country with a notorious past of racial segregation, and one that continues to be burdened by complex socio-political realities.

Strictly as a batter, however, his average in January 2023 read 34.53 after 54 Tests. He had just one century in eight years. Aesthetically, too, the diminutive right-hander’s style didn’t have the stamp of past occupants of the South African middle-order. He wasn’t blessed with the madcap genius of AB de Villiers. He didn’t have the wristy wizardry of Hashim Amla or the textbook technique of Jacques Kallis. Nor did he have Faf du Plessis’ all-encompassing adaptability.

He may never hold as much sway as a batter as any of those towering personalities. But unlike them, what he does have now is a shot at winning a major ICC trophy at the senior level for the first time (South Africa won the Wills International Cup in 1998, but it was before the tournament became the ICC Champions Trophy). The opportunity awaits at Lord’s in June when South Africa locks horns with defending champion Australia in the World Test Championship final.

As captain of the Test team, Bavuma is very much the man steering this successful ship. He has won eight Tests and drawn just one since becoming captain. That he has had an able bowling attack has helped, of course. But his 809 runs in these nine Tests have come at 57.78, taking his overall average to 37.95 after 63 Tests. In these last two years, he has racked up three centuries. It points to quite a turnaround, and he could soar even higher if that glittering trophy is placed in his hands at the end of the finale in London.

Turning point

Three months before Bavuma took over as Test captain in February 2023, he had cut a forlorn figure at a press conference as he tried to make sense of a disastrous T20 World Cup campaign in Australia that culminated in a defeat to the Netherlands. This was the second instance of South Africa suffering a group-stage exit in the marquee event within a year, both under Bavuma’s watch.

So, when Shukri Conrad stepped in as Test coach ahead of a two-match home series against West Indies and nominated Bavuma as the leader to lift South Africa from the rut of losing eight of its last 18 Tests, pessimism pervaded the air. Particularly given that he was asked to relinquish the T20I captaincy at the same time.

To complicate matters, the initiation as Test captain began on the worst note personally — he bagged a pair against West Indies in Centurion. Having had his T20I captaincy tenure marred by criticism that his batting was a liability, he couldn’t afford even the notion of scrutiny on his very existence in the Test team. The only way to allay that was by making runs. Lots of runs.

“I always find myself in situations where I am coming in [when] it’s 20 for four or 10 for two, and you really have to try to soak in the pressure. I think I’ve done that fairly well in my career”

In the next Test at Johannesburg, he did exactly that. After making 28 in the first dig, Bavuma may have felt like the universe was conspiring against him when he walked out to bat with South Africa stuttering at eight for two in the second innings. The first-innings lead was just 69 runs, and as wickets fell to reduce the host to 32 for three, 69 for four and 103 for five, the possibility of defeat loomed large.

It was perhaps the trigger for Bavuma to summon all his mental resolve and churn out a knock of substance that would lay down a marker for himself at the Test level. He led a superb recovery, cobbling together vital lower-order partnerships to take the game away from West Indies. His contribution of 172 in a total of 321 was enough to command the respect of the change room.

What that century may have also done for him was infuse confidence about his capacity to cross the three-figure mark. Prior to that, even on his good days, there were gritty half-centuries rather than headline-grabbing hundreds. A knock of 74 against Australia on a challenging Hobart surface in 2016 springs to mind. Although in Bavuma’s defence, it could be argued that he was often tasked with staging a rescue act with the team staring at a collapse.

“I always find myself in situations where I am coming in at No. 5 or 6, and it’s 20 for four or 10 for two, and you really have to try to soak in the pressure,” he had said after the innings of 172. “I think I’ve done that fairly well in my career, albeit I didn’t have any big scores to back it up.”

That Bavuma is now coming into his own with the bat was most evident during the latest home summer. The opponents were Sri Lanka and Pakistan, admittedly not the most formidable teams around, but Bavuma played exactly how the captain of a team eyeing a major title should: he racked up 504 runs in four Tests at 72, with two hundreds.

Leadership material: Bavuma has shown he can handle challenging situations with tact and poise — qualities that have helped him lead a team in transition. 
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Handling strife as leader

With the benefit of hindsight, then, the decision to make Bavuma Test skipper was about right. Perhaps, Conrad saw Bavuma’s demonstration of poise in strife-ridden situations as T20I leader as a requisite trait for a team in transition. A case in point was his handling of Quinton de Kock’s refusal to take the knee in support of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement during the 2021 T20 World Cup in UAE. The experienced wicketkeeper’s decision could have so easily driven a wedge between the players, but Bavuma, just a few months into his captaincy, didn’t let that happen with his measured response.

Even before the tournament, Bavuma was in a spot as white-ball captain when accusations by former teammates against coach Mark Boucher surfaced at the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) hearings. Here, too, Bavuma tackled a delicate issue tactfully.

It’s another matter that runs from his bat and victories for the team had dried up then. But over the past two years, probably aided by the changes to the coaching set-up after Boucher’s stint, Bavuma’s batting and the team’s results have got back on track. That the South Africans reached the semifinals of the 2023 ODI World Cup and the final of the 2024 T20 World Cup are also indicative of the upswing in fortunes.

To truly shed the baggage of the past when the Proteas came close but never crossed the line, though, beating a fierce adversary in Australia in a marquee final is imperative. If Bavuma can spearhead that mission successfully, he will be deserving of a whole chapter and a prominent spot on the cover in books on South African cricket down the line.