Temba Bavuma has scored three international centuries, but none rank higher in importance than his exceptional effort in Paarl. It’s time to stop the Bavuma bashing and support a cricketing giant, writes RYAN VREDE.
Still riding the high of South Africa’s Test series victory, and interested to confirm a professional hunch I had, I called up Bavuma’s stats in his last 10 Test innings.
He averages just shy of 64 in this period. Four of those 10 innings came against Pakistan in Pakistan. Notably, he has been unbeaten four times in those 10 innings.
I tweeted my findings, doing so mostly to celebrate an upturn in form. I’ve been critical of his mediocre record in Test cricket, so it was only fair that I acknowledged what is a clear and exponential improvement.
And while I’ve been critical, a disconcerting number of South Africans have been brutal. These people have held him up as the poster boy for everything that is wrong with the quota system.
I’ve never been in Bavuma’s position, but I have enough emotional intelligence to understand that accusations of retention based only on the colour of one’s skin would be deeply hurtful. I imagine most would carry this weight into every match. I’m not sure if Bavuma did. He has never laid bare his thoughts on the subject, at least not in a way that would give us any meaningful insight into his feelings.
To his credit, he has never painted himself as a hapless victim of this racially charged rhetoric. He has just done his job.
I digress.
My tweet was met with three days’ worth of replies explaining how the not-outs have boosted Bavuma’s 64 average. They have, but this was not the point I sensed these people were making. The tone of most replies suggested that they wanted to perpetuate the perception of Bavuma as wholly undeserving of his Test career. His rise, it appeared, was utterly inconceivable and deeply uncomfortable for them.
Bavuma needed to be bad. There was no other professional posture that would do.
Only, he hasn’t been bad for some time. Certainly not this summer, one in which he not only survived but thrived against some of the world’s elite Test bowlers in the India series.
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A change of format didn’t change his hot streak. In Paarl on Wednesday, Bavuma struck his second ODI century (to add to his one Test hundred).
It was an innings that featured technical excellence and intense mental application. This was not a pitch for liberal strokeplay. It rewarded the smart, patient, skilful and resolute. Bavuma was all of those.
He has made massive investments in his game. I suspect in the past 12 to 18 months he has spent hundreds of hours hitting thousands of balls, fine-tuning everything from what he says to himself just before the point of delivery, to how late he strikes the ball. There would have been shots shelved, and others adopted. Trigger movements trialled. Foot and head positions experimented with. It all culminated in what appears to be a highly effective method that is replicable.
We saw the fruits of that investment in Paarl. It was, in my view, his best and most important innings ever, not only because of the calibre of the opposition but because of how it would have impacted his captaincy.
Bavuma is a rookie white-ball skipper, one whose appointment polarised South Africa’s cricket fraternity. Those who criticised it did so mostly based on his then mediocrity in Test cricket. After all, his ODI average at the time was in the high 40s (it’s now 55.36), so their reservations could surely not have been rooted in his unsuitability as an ODI batter.
Bavuma would have been acutely aware of this. Yet, for elite professional athletes, the voices from the outside matter so much less than the ones in their heads. These types of knocks bash the stuffing out of self-doubt and have a habit of shattering any lingering impostor syndrome.
Bavuma is small in stature but would have walked into the change room as a giant in the eyes of the men he leads. Privately, that will be satisfying and settling in equal measure. There will be a part of Bavuma that feels vindicated in a broader context as well. He has taken so much criticism, some of it justified, much of it malicious. He deserves to breathe easy.
Furthermore, this knock’s catalytic effect will transcend the format it was achieved in. This will bolster Bavuma the cricketer as a whole, not just the ODI guise of that player.
Finally, and most importantly, Bavuma, through his consistent excellence, has now become a reference point for gifted black African batters to aspire to.
In March 2021, I lamented the lack of black African batters pressing for Test honours. The domestic four-day season is in full swing and the situation has improved slightly, with four of the top 10 highest run-scorers being black Africans.
Most young people can only be what they can see. This makes it critical that Bavuma and other black African batters succeed because that success creates a mental reference point in the minds of black African batters from similar backgrounds that previously did not exist.
I’ve simplified this somewhat, and accept that a lot has to go right for a talented black African batter to ascend to the point Bavuma finds himself now. That doesn’t change the fact that Bavuma not only occupies that space but excels in it, sending the message that it is possible.
Bavuma has taken some heavy blows to get to this point. He has never moaned about this, accepting responsibility for his professional shortcomings, and always committing to finding ways to be better. It appears he has done so, and in the process transformed himself into a fine international batter.
It is time for those with rigid views of Bavuma to allow that posture to be softened by the weight and consistency of his performances.
