Few cricketers have as many subplots to deal with as Bavuma, but you would hardly know it watching the breezy innings South Africa’s captain put together in Gqeberha
Andrew Fidel Fernando05-Dec-2024When you’re Temba Bavuma, an innings is not just an innings, a fifty is not allowed to only be a fifty, every hundred heaves with meaning, and a career playing a bat-and-ball sport has to feel like a tightrope maze over a river teeming with crocs. This is the lot of the trailblazer. And as far as trails go, this is a pretty rough one to blaze. Test batting, in the imagination of many, is among the most cerebral endeavours in sport. And you need not go hunting in especially dark corners of the internet to encounter the vile opinion that pursuits that require brain power are best handled by certain types of people. Bavuma likely falls outside these descriptions.Bavuma didn’t really ask for any of this. Ahead of this match, questioned on how he got through tough times in his first ten years in Test cricket, he focused his answer on his “love for the game”. He’d rolled up to that press conference driving the team mini van himself through the gates of the stadium, like a dad popping down to the hardware store to pick up some new screws in whatever family vehicle was available. No drivers, no security, no hangers on. Why complicate life?Related
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The innings he played the next day was awash in this simplicity. Though South Africa were 44 for 3 when he arrived at the crease in Gqeberha, he himself was clearly judging length beautifully. Fifth ball, he slid back against Prabath Jayasuriya and flicked one effortlessly off his pads for a four through midwicket. Not long after that, he dabbed a shortish, slightly wide ball, perfectly in the gap between slips and gully. A third boundary, riding the bounce of an Asitha Fernando delivery to deposit him through point, came off the 20th ball he faced.Off 30 deliveries, Bavuma was on 27, having just launched Jayasuriya so powerfully over deep midwicket, the ball was briefly lost over the corner wall. This was the over before lunch, so he have hunkered down and done the responsible thing. Not in this innings. Bavuma had been by a distance the best batter in the first Test. In this kind of form, no outside context was required. The bowler had pitched short and runs were on offer. “Those screws are on sale? Yeah, I’ll take them.”Temba Bavuma revealed that this upper cut was fully improvised•Gallo Images/Getty ImagesAt the other end, Ryan Rickelton had laboured to 29 off 74 balls, having flirted with plenty of balls outside off stump, where Bavuma had been more compact in defence.”For Temba to come in at 40-odd for 3 and not counterpunch but just kind of change a bit of momentum our way was very important,” Rickelton, who top scored with 101, said after play. “He’s moving really well, playing the ball really late as well, and hitting it where he wants it to go.”If there is a little surprise in Rickelton’s voice, it is because Bavuma has a reputation. Frequently his innings are weighed down by all sorts of contexts. Not for nothing is Bavuma’s Test match strike rate a shade under 50.”Usually, I think out of the two of us, people expect me to be scoring quickly. And it was nice to have the shoe on the other foot and sit and watch from the other side. He took a lot of pressure off me. He played just really good cricket shots on a wicket that isn’t the easiest to score on. He opened up the game and he wore them down quite a lot.”
“Usually, I think out of the two of us, people expect me to be scoring quickly. And it was nice to have the shoe on the other foot and sit and watch from the other side.”Ryan Rickelton on Temba Bavuma’s knock
Bavuma continued to float through the innings, the Gqeberha band piping up through the afternoon to bathe the surrounds in further joy and levity. He passed Rickelton and got to fifty off the 57th delivery he faced, flitting down the track to spin, easing into checked drives, almost as if top-scoring in the last game had untethered a part of him, somehow. Even in that Durban match, batting with the tail after Sri Lanka’s quicks had ripped the top order apart, he still was able to play a shot straight out of childhood fantasy – upper-cutting Lahiru Kumara for six over the slips with both his feet off the ground – a shot he later revealed was completely improvised. Maybe this version of Bavuma has always been there.Three innings into this home season, he has made 70, 113, and now 78 off 109, all outstanding innings, each varying dramatically in texture from the last. With five potential knocks to go, Bavuma now has the chance to write his name across the summer. An opportunity, perhaps, to drive his detractors back further, though they will likely continue to hang that conversion rate around his neck. With Bavuma, there are always these subplots, always things that remain unsaid but widely understood, bubbling beneath the things that are actually said.But perhaps it is best not to peer too far ahead, or look too far sideways. Why complicate life? Maybe it’s best to spend a moment in the spirit of Bavuma’s innings. On day one at St George’s Park, a batter revelled in his own excellent form, and produced the kind of innings so full of fun you couldn’t help but get caught up.