Mainly Bavuma in Gqeberha was an incredible feat of skill, resilience and constant adaptive intelligence, in the way only Test Cricket<\/a> can deliver. Bavuma walked out to bat with the summer running away from him. Thrashed in the first Test, South Africa were 12 for two, faced with one of the great bowling attacks.<\/p>\n Bavuma has been a transformative Test captain, with 12 wins in 14 matches, four hundreds, a world championship mace<\/a>, all stretched over three broken years. But he is still always, always chasing legitimacy and affirmation, in a way that is unique to cricket, but also unique to this man in this role in this sporting nation. First black middle order batsman. First black captain. How is this going to fall? How strong is that ice underfoot?<\/p>\n Temba Bavuma\u2019s brilliant, resiliant 179 took 334 balls, and set the stage for a memorable South Africa victory in the second Test. Photograph: Themba Hadebe\/AP<\/p>\n Two days later Bavuma was last man out for 179 in a total of 425 for nine, sprinting off with a kind of light around him, waving his bat giddily, 36 years old, wife and kid in the crowd, the greatest moment of his sporting life.<\/p>\n There were so many parts to this. First, the survival period, with that endearing tic of gently jutting his chin out at the bowler, mixed in with the odd deliciously clean whip or push or clump. Bavuma has really quick hands. I remember seeing him in east London in a white-ball game against dark skies and low stands, and all you could really see was his hands whizzing with thrilling speed, like fireflies in the night.<\/p>\n In Gqeberha he was all poise and measured severity. When he plays a cover drive he seems to lean at 45 degrees, knees bent, entire body easing into the oblique, perfectly contained in his own little square of time and space.<\/p>\n The game changed with the partnership of 106 with Marco Jansen<\/a> before lunch on the third day, brilliant counterattacking Test cricket, but also an amazing tableau. At one end the gangling Dutch farmer with the easy, guileless stride, a cricketer who always seems to be running in with a bushel of radishes over one shoulder and a bolt-action rabbit gun in his waistband. At the other the tiny, super-smart black captain. It\u2019s no more than an optic, unrelated to the nation\u2019s real-world struggles. But it\u2019s also real. Sport is, as ever, saying: how about this version of things?<\/p>\n Bavuma got to his hundred with a release of pent-up power, swivel-pulling Pat Cummins through midwicket, holding the shot, one of those moments where the batter feels what has happened a second before anyone else, allowed in that microsecond to exist all alone inside his own little pocket of private triumph.<\/p>\n But then Bavuma has always had to be aware, to hold himself a certain way. There was surprise in some corners that he turned out to be such an unflappable captain. Try being Temba Bavuma for a bit. You think this stuff is going to faze you?<\/p>\n Bavuma is a child of the transition period, born three months after Nelson Mandela left Victor Verster Prison, the same day (get this) the government finally opened up all its public hospitals to black citizens. He grew up a township boy in Langa, playing in the street, learning which strips of local tarmac had the most carry and bounce.<\/p>\n Plucked out aged 10 on a scholarship to one of South Africa\u2019s top schools, he struggled. Ten is relatively late to start trying to become an elite batter. How about still perfecting your English, learning how to act, what to put on your plate at dinner? Even his height, which we must always talk about, is a thing. Bavuma is the 10th shortest man ever to play Test cricket. Yeah, pour it on. What else have you got?<\/p>\n There was the slow-burn start to his career. For years the quota talk circled, the weird dual burden of innate outsiderdom and suspicions of favour. Then suddenly you\u2019re the first township captain of what has always been an anglophone, military-elite kind of sport.<\/p>\n
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