“I trust that it will keep inspiring our nation,” remarks the triumphant captain of South Africa.
The current world Test champion team is led by Temba Bavuma, who is taking ownership of it.
For the first time in his career, and perhaps even in his life, Bavuma can be acknowledged as more than merely a black African cricketer, as he expressed during the post-match press conference. He is now truly recognized for who he is as a person, a leader, and a cricketer. This sentiment can be encapsulated in the term his batting coach used to characterize him on the third evening, when Bavuma played despite a strained hamstring and a profound sense of self-belief: tough.
Bavuma hails from Langa, a township in Cape Town that is as distant from St John’s Wood, both economically and geographically, as one can imagine. He spent his childhood playing street cricket on roads named after the renowned locations he and his teammates had only heard of but never envisioned reaching. “I never imagined myself playing here at Lord’s. It was merely a fantasy,” Bavuma reflected, reminiscing about his youth in the early 90s, a period marked by significant transformation in South Africa.
Within a decade, he was receiving education at some of the nation’s premier institutions, part of the initial waves of children of color attending elite, previously all-white schools. By his late teens, he had entered the domestic cricketing framework. At the age of 24, he made his Test debut in a team ranked No.1, carrying a burden that no other batter in the international arena has had to shoulder. Bavuma has had to repeatedly demonstrate that black South Africans (noting the legacies of Richards, Sobers, Lloyd, Greenidge, and Lara) are capable of batting.
His position was quite unique, as numerous black South African batters had participated during the Apartheid era, including some from his own lineage, yet their achievements were overlooked. The unification was merely nominal, and it took six years for South Africa to field its inaugural black African cricketer – Mahkaya Ntini – and 22 years before Bavuma received his cap. Being the first came with the weight of representation. In Bavuma, South Africa recognized the entirety of their black African batting prowess, which amplified the significance of his every performance.
When he succeeded, as he did with his first century in 2016, it was celebrated as a pivotal moment for black cricket. Conversely, when he faltered, it was perceived as a failure of the entire demographic. This is an immense burden to bear, often without empathy from the outside world, which comprehends little of the intricacies of South Africa’s racial dynamics. When Bavuma was appointed to lead the white-ball teams in 2021, despite having only six ODI and eight T20I caps, he was swiftly labeled a quota captain, and his lackluster performance during South Africa’s dismal 2022 T20 World Cup, where they were defeated by the Netherlands, did not aid his cause. However, a change occurred.
A new coach, Shukri Conrad, who possesses a deep understanding of the complexities of South African cricket due to his extensive career within it, was entrusted with the Test team. He selected Bavuma as his captain, placing him at the helm in the format where he had excelled the most. Bavuma’s initial performance under Conrad was a career-best 172 against the West Indies at his home ground, the Wanderers. That century was seven years in the making, marking Bavuma’s second in 57 Tests, and it opened the floodgates. He added two more centuries in the subsequent summer and has been at the forefront of South Africa’s current WTC campaign.
