While tanning on a beach in December 2012, Aiden Markram received an unlikely call — from Ray Jennings, then coach of South Africa’s under-19 cricket team.
Jennings had an under-19 World Cup in 2014 coming up, and he was underwhelmed by his batting resources. He’d canvassed Murray Coetzee, Markram’s former captain at Pretoria Boys’ High, and skipper of the 2012 South African under-19s. Coetzee said Markram was worth looking at.
“He’s a kid who makes batting look easy,” Coetzee told Jennings.
Jennings took Coetzee’s advice. Markram was invited to the first under-19 camp of 2013, joining Kagiso Rabada and Lungi Ngidi, and though he had a patchy tour of India, was made South African under-19 skipper in due course.
At the 2014 World Cup, Rabada took six for 25 in 8.2 steaming overs in the semifinal against Australia, playing the South Africans into the final against Pakistan, which they won by six wickets.
Rabada was similarly destructive against the Aussies at the World Test Championship final at Lord’s last week, bowling a supercharged first spell and wrapping up Australia’s cheeky tail to finish with first innings figures of 5/51. His second innings bowling wasn’t too shabby either. His final analysis was 9/110 in the match.
Markram, too, played his part. After a six-ball duck in the first innings at Lord’s, he was the second-innings anchor around which others revolved, none more so than skipper Temba Bavuma, who scored a second-innings 66.
Markram scored 136, the only century of the match. And he racked it up with the calm and authority his team needed, 11 years since being named player of the tournament at the 2014 under-19 World Cup. As he said after Saturday’s victory at Lord’s: “Nope, I didn’t sleep too well [he was not out on 98 overnight], I took a sleeping tablet but the mind just kept on turning.”
After winning the trophy as boys in 2014, the team has now won the ultimate title in the Test game as men. Though the Proteas’ recent record against Australia in Tests is poor, here was a breezy one-off, with records and statistics counting for little.
The Proteas sacrificed a first-innings deficit of 78 but bowled splendidly in the Aussies’ second innings, none more so than Ngidi, and then chased down the target of 282.
As Matthew Hayden said afterwards on Cricinfo: “You would have said that South Africa were underdogs. Australia is the more experienced side. I don’t think they’ve lost at Lord’s for 22 years. For South Africa this is an absolutely phenomenal result.”
There’s a Rabada story to go with the Markram one, and it doesn’t involve a drug immortalised in JJ Cale’s song. After his six wickets against the Aussies at the under-19 World Cup, Rabada, recently out of school, phoned his former cricket master at St Stithians College in Joburg with a strange request.
He wanted to know from Wim Jansen if he could now have a tree planted on the first-team oval’s boundary in his name? While still at school, he had never met the qualifying tree-criteria by taking five wickets in a first XI match.
Surely, he asked, with an edge of desperation in his young voice, 6/25 against Australia was good enough for a tree? Jansen was initially nonplussed but quickly responded that, yes, of course, he would see to it that a tree was now planted.
Winning the World Test Championship does raise the intriguing question of whether St Stithians will be inspired to plant a fully grown oak or fever tree at the oval
Winning the World Test Championship does raise the intriguing question of whether St Stithians will be inspired to plant a fully grown oak or fever tree at the oval but, this aside, South Africa’s cricketers now join the Springboks as world champions. All the country needs in the coming months is for Bafana Bafana to do their bit, too.
The cricket final was a wonderful match with more trickery than a magician’s show. The South Africans bowled the Aussies out on the first afternoon for 212 but were 38/4 at the close and would appear to have lost most of the initiative they had toiled to establish.
They nosedived like a paper aeroplane to 138 all out on the second day. In the context of what was appearing to be a low-scoring match, that they hadn’t reached parity with the Australians appeared to be crucial.
Nevertheless, they regained the initiative beautifully. When Australia’s Beau Webster was out for nine at 64/5, the Aussies looked in a spot of bother in their second innings. In keeping with the pattern of the match, however, they rallied, and posted 73 runs for the last two wickets, Mitchell Starc, the fast bowler, top scoring with 58.
The Proteas prospered in the main from Markram and Bavuma, who set out South Africa’s stall in a fourth-wicket stand of 147, with cameos from Wiaan Mulder (27) and David Bedingham (21 not out).
It was by no means the perfect performance. South Africa conceded 39 extras in a match that was over before lunch on the fourth day. Then again, Bavuma batted in the second innings through the pain of a hamstring injury. The team caught exceptionally well, no catch better than Kyle Verreynne’s on the leg side to dismiss Travis Head in the first innings, and they were always up for the fight.
What a heady four days it was, and surely there was no better place at which to play it than Lord’s, a ground that has many positive associations for all South African cricketers.
What next? The win against Australia will make South Africa more attractive opposition than they were, say, a year ago, when they sent a second-string outfit to New Zealand because players, among them Markram and Rabada, were involved with the South African Twenty20 tournament.
Being more attractive to others will be good for the Proteas, good for Cricket South Africa — and good for Test cricket in the country. But South Africa’s programme for future Tests isn’t looking healthy. There are no home Tests for the summer of 2025/2026, but this must change. Rivals will surely be clamouring to play South Africa now, and perhaps — nothing has yet been announced — there might even be a Newlands Test in 2026.
Last week’s final was a fine advertisement for Test cricket overall. It see-sawed session by session. There was colour (the setting), humour (the Chaplinesque tics of Steve Smith), the weather (the rain) and more.
After such a spectacle, Test cricket needs to be taken more seriously by those at CSA who plan bilateral tours. After all, South Africa now have their status as world champions to uphold.
While Markram and Rabada, as alumni of the 2014 under-19 team, have always had the confidence that accrued from that World Cup triumph, skipper Bavuma hasn’t been that lucky. Up until now, he’s had no international silverware to show off and, at 35, he might reasonably have felt that time was running out.
Now, finally, he has something to wear around his neck. He’s suffered for being captain. He’s been maligned and disrespected. Others might have buckled under the weight of being South Africa’s first black Test skipper. For him, last Saturday was memorable.
Not to forget that Bavuma had a bit of a gamble in this match. On the first morning, he won the toss. The inherited wisdom if you win it is that nine times out of 10 you bat first; on the 10th you think about it, then bat first. Bavuma decided to bowl first.
When the Aussies were approaching 200/6 in their first innings with a counterattacking Alex Carey at the wicket, Bavuma’s decision might have appeared foolish. By then it was too late. He stuck with it for a long and increasingly exciting four days. And South Africans will be happy he did.
“There were doubters as to the route we took to get to this point,” he said after victory, “but this is really special.”
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