Temba Bavuma needed a moment. So he took it. Australia’s win, by 214 runs, at Kingsmead on Tuesday had been confirmed minutes earlier. The handshakes were done, and the hurt hung in the haze of a hot Durban day.
So much of Bavuma’s life is lived in an often unkind, unfair, unblinking glare. Meet him and you will wonder how such a private man deals with having so little privacy.
On Tuesday he did that by exiting the field stage left and sitting in the welcome darkness of the dugout. There he remained in splendid isolation, but for a brief visit from the team’s media manager to make arrangements for what was to follow, for seven minutes.
The back of his head rested against the curved roof. His right arm was draped over the seat alongside him. His left knee was bent to allow his foot to ride on the back of the seat in front of him. He looked straight ahead.
His thoughts were his own, but he wouldn’t be human if he wasn’t pondering losing a Test as captain for the first time in his 13 matches in charge. Less certain was that he was mulling over playing in only the fifth Test of the 38 South Africa have had at home during the past 10 years that has gone to a fifth day. Whatever Bavuma was thinking about, he looked like a man waiting for a bus: unhurried and unfazed.
Because Bavuma doesn’t do drama. At least not in public. The closest he has come to looking flustered in front of the press was in the aftermath of South Africa’s calamitous loss to the Netherlands in a T20 World Cup match in Adelaide in November 2022. That shock put his team out of the running for a place in the semifinals, and Bavuma seemed startled to be asked if that would make him reconsider his position as captain.
Tuesday’s result wasn’t in that category. But it would need explaining. After those seven precious minutes in the dark Bavuma rose and prepared himself to do so.
Disappointing, skipper?
“Yeah, it has been. It’s not the way you want to start any kind of series, let alone against a top outfit like Australia. The emotions are still high. You want that to settle before you get into the conversations and really understand [what happened]. But there are obvious things that we could improve on, whether it’s from a batting or a bowling point of view. No-one is happy in that changeroom.”
South Africa reduced Australia to 124/6 on the first day. But Matt Renshaw’s career-best 190 took them to a total of 390. The match was effectively decided on the third day when South Africa, batting on a perfect pitch, shambled to 99/4 in 30.1 overs. Agreed?
“Yeah, that’s part of the disappointment, right. You’ve got to praise the Australians for the way they hung in when we had them at 120 [124] for six. As an attack you’re backing yourself to restrict them to less than 250. For them to go and get the score they got took it out of us mentally. The conditions were good for batting and we weren’t able to make the most of it.”
South Africa’s reply of 284 spared them the prospect of following on. But Australia took their lead to 420, with Renshaw scoring 82, before declaring at what became Tea on Monday. The home side were 102 for the loss of four wickets at stumps.
Aiden Markram and Wiaan Mulder stood firm for almost two hours on Tuesday morning, but then lost 6/51 to crash to defeat an hour after lunch. Markram was ninth out for a flinty 75 and Josh Hazlewood took a career-best 6/49.
The match was South Africa’s first Test in almost 11 months. The Australians played six Tests in the same period before coming to this country. Was that a factor?
“I can never sit here and use that as an excuse. We knew that was going to be in front of us. We had the opportunity to prepare as much as we could. Yes, you can never really prepare for Test cricket without playing Test cricket. But a lot of the mistakes we made were mental. That’s where we really let ourselves down, you know. Whatever cobwebs were there will have been dusted out hopefully.”
How and why did the South Africans make such poor decisions to succumb to a litany of shabby strokes in their first innings?
“It’s about assessing the conditions. If the pitch says play a certain way we try and play a certain way. That’s been the plan we’ve followed that has brought us success. The conversations leading up to this game haven’t been any different.
“There were soft dismissals. We could throw me into that category. When you’re playing against a top outfit those things get weeded out.
“Our guys definitely weren’t throwing caution to the wind and playing recklessly. But there was a level of pressure that some of the guys weren’t accustomed to.”
Bavuma and his players will have four days between hostilities to sort themselves out: the St George’s Park Test starts on Sunday. Here’s hoping Bavuma finds more moments of splendid isolation before then.
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