Temba Bavuma insists he is good enough to play Test cricket.
The 31-year-old has scored 2,318 runs in 47 Tests since making his debut in December 2014 at an average of 34.08.
His only Test hundred came in his seventh match, against England at Newlands in 2016. Since then, he has scored 16 fifties, with a highest score of 95* against Australia at the Wanderers in 2018 when he ran out of batting partners.
“From a Test cricket point of view, I know the criticism has been about my inability to convert starts and add to my sole hundred,” Bavuma told the Sunday Times.
“I think that is probably valid from their point of view, I can sit here and give various reasons as to why that is the situation — but criticism from that point of view, I can accept.
“What I can’t accept is people saying I am not good enough to play for my country, I don’t think that is a fair statement for people to make.”
Bavuma, who has scored two ODI centuries in 16 matches, said he had targeted a second Test hundred during the recent series against India. He ended up scoring 221 runs in six innings with a highest score of 52.
“Scoring a hundred did play a bit on my mind before the series against India. I never set goals but that is a goal that I set for myself going into the India series to try and get to that three-figure mark.
“My one disappointment from the India series is that I wasn’t able to do that, but I take a lot of comfort from the fact that we were still able to win the series.
“At the end of the day, as a batter people will look at your statistics, people will look at the number of hundreds you scored and they will come to a conclusion as to what type of player you were.
“People don’t always look at how you went about scoring your runs and that is something that I always find myself in. Looking as a batting unit over the last couple of years, I think that’s been an issue among all our batters, guys not scoring enough hundreds for the team.”
