Sport newsmaker: How Temba Bavuma made cricket history

There is an unexamined theme in South African sport: the relationship between a national coach and a captain (often young). In rugby, Jake White famously appointed John Smit as Bok skipper before Smit had pulled on a green-and-gold jersey.

In cricket, there were close working relationships between Bob Woolmer and Hansie Cronje, and Mickey Arthur and Graeme Smith.

Proteas coach Shukri Conrad put his stamp on the theme by relieving Dean Elgar of the captaincy and promoting Temba Bavuma. The blowback was extreme, some of it racial. For Bavuma, it was just another cross to bear.

Elgar was incandescent. He promptly went out and played his finest Test innings, a bravura 185 at his home ground in Centurion in the Boxing Day Test against India two years ago. South Africa won that match by an innings and 32 runs, but Elgar was rapidly passing into history. He would play only one more Test, finishing with 14 hundreds and 5,347 runs at an average of just under 38.

Bavuma was now free to captain the team as he saw fit. Some skippers are cowed by the responsibilities of captaincy. Its impact is seen most obviously in their batting. Not Bavuma.

He hasn’t played a great number of Tests as skipper, being dogged by injury, but his batting average as captain is 57 runs per innings. That is exceptional.

Bavuma was educated at St David’s Marist Inanda in Joburg and was then part of a Gauteng Lions cohort that also included Devon Conway, the current Kiwi opener. Bavuma often hung onto the edge of the precipice of Test cricket by the skin of his fingertips. He was unfortunate enough to play when racial engineering was the dominant ideology in South African cricket. Many argued, often without compassion, that he didn’t deserve his place in the side. At times it seemed they had a point.

After staying in the frame for so long, Bavuma has become the much-loved oupa of South African cricket

But Bavuma has a cussed streak. He’s an undemonstrative man, so it’s difficult to say exactly what he’s feeling. But slowly he began to work his way into people’s affections. Along with his Test form as skipper, his one-day international form mushroomed. After staying in the frame for so long, Bavuma has become the much-loved oupa of South African cricket.

And he’s not averse to a brave decision. In the World Test Championship final against Australia at Lord’s in June, he won the toss and decided to bowl, citing “overhead conditions”. The decision might have backfired against a batting lineup as strong as Australia’s. But it didn’t. Bavuma’s bowlers came to the party. The Aussies were bowled out for 212 and 207.

In the Proteas’ first innings, Bavuma made the second-highest score of 36 (including the only six of the innings), following it with a priceless 66 in the second innings. His third-wicket partnership of 147 with Aiden Markram was the defining partnership of the match. When Bavuma was out with the total on 217, there was work to do, but it was time for others to do it.

Winning the world championship mace was the culmination of a dogged Test career, an achievement Bavuma and those close to him will cherish until the day he dies. At 35, he’s getting a little long in the tooth, and there isn’t an infinite amount of cricket life left in him. But he has just presided over what had seemed an unlikely two-Test thrashing of India in India. His obstinate streak has served him well, and it could sustain him for the next few years.

Finally, some related historical thoughts. In the late 1950s, CLR James, the newspaper editor and Marxist historian, campaigned through his newspaper for the West Indies to have its first black cricket captain. James argued, in a time of independence from Great Britain throughout the Caribbean, that it was ludicrous that white men — often inferior cricketers to the indigenous cricket elite — continued to captain the West Indies. The time was ripe for a black man to take over the helm.

He had someone in mind. That player was Frank Worrell, a man who ushered in a period when the West Indians captivated not only the cricket lovers of the Caribbean but also of the world.

At the end of the gripping 1960/1961 series in Australia, for example, Worrell’s West Indians were driven through the streets of Melbourne in convertibles. About 250,000 Aussie fans turned out to cheer them on.

Sport is less generous nowadays. But in Temba Bavuma, South African cricket has a cricket pioneer, someone whom history will judge well for his poise and dignity. If he is sometimes a little over-earnest, we forgive him his seriousness. It’s too trivial to hold against him.