How the Proteas Learnt To Be 'Bok Clever'
Rugby has been significantly more successful than cricket in South Africa, but the Proteas are starting to learn from the world champion Springboks.
In June, all things being equal, Temba Bavuma will lead the Proteas onto the turf at Lord’s for the final of the World Test Championship against Australia. In a sense, it will be the closing of a circle.
South Africa’s first Test upon re-admission was in Bridgetown but her second, the one that amounted to a spiritual homecoming, was a couple of months’ later, at Lord’s, in July 1994.
South Africa was an all-white team in those days. They were led by Kepler Wessels, who had already played Test cricket for Australia, and the team reflected not the South Africa many wished for but the South Africa that was.
Such tension animated South African cricket, for good and bad, for 25 years after that, and one could argue that it animates it to some degree still. One could also argue that when Shukri Conrad made Bavuma Test captain shortly after Conrad was appointed coach two years ago, some of that tension finally sloughed away.
The way that it did so was welcome, I would venture, for many South Africans. In a symbolic way, it, too, was a homecoming, calling to mind the appointment of Frank Worrell as the first black West Indian captain after Worrell took over from Gerry Alexander before the tour of Australia in 1960.
Making Bavuma captain was Conrad’s Siya Kolisi gambit and, now, two years later, we can safely say that the gambit has worked wonders. Playing in the Kolisi role as cricket’s blindside flanker, Bavuma, is a different man and, because of that, he is a vastly improved cricketer.
This said, he was improving as a cricketer when he was made captain, so which is it to be? Perhaps the most sensible and accurate thing to say about Bavuma’s remarkable Indian Summer is to say that being given the captaincy seemed to accelerate his already fast-improving late development as a Test cricketer.
His is a fascinating story, full of full chapters in their own right, and one all-too-easily neglected in the crass hurly-burly that passes for journalism in contemporary South Africa.
In 15 knocks – and this includes the pair he made on debut as South Africa’s Test captain, and the 172 he made in the Test directly afterwards – he has scored 809 runs at an average of roundabout 57. Contrast this with his average of roundabout 35 over the length of his Test career as a whole.
Besides giving Bavuma the Proteas’ captaincy, Conrad’s Kolisi gambit has worked in other tangible ways. The Proteas, for example, are now in the World Test Championship (WTC) final. They topped the table above Australia because in their final match of the cycle they beat Pakistan by 10 wickets a couple of days ago at Newlands.
In the final analysis, they won eight of their matches, drawing one to the West Indies in Guyana and losing three, once to India at home at Newlands and twice away to New Zealand. In the two New Zealand Tests they fielded an under-strength team captained by Neil Brand because their first-choice players were unavailable, astonishingly lucrative commitments keeping them tied to the SA20.
Yes, the current WTC system is manifestly imperfect – South Africa didn’t play England or Australia in the 2023-5 cycle, and didn’t play India away – but show me a perfect system and I will show you God, the devil and the deep blue sea.
Bavuma, as South Africa’s most experienced Test cricketer given that he made his Test debut in 2014, before anyone else in the current team, much will be expected of him on the hallowed turf in June. He will be seeking to do exactly what Wessels did way back in 1994 and score a century at Lord’s.
We’ve detailed the tangible ways in which Conrad’s Kolisi gambit worked wonders but what of the intangible ways? These are more difficult to unravel, but here’s a cheeky New Year’s thought. Bavuma became Test captain before the Springboks won the 2023 Rugby World Cup, thus legitimising the idea of black sporting captains and normalising, if ever-so-slightly, the often-fractured environment that is day-to-day South Africa.
His appointment, and that of Siya’s before him, told South Africa and the world that black captains are here to stay. Being made captain appears to have done wonders for Bavuma’s batting, his sense of self and his sense of responsibility. We can only hope that one day books will be written about him and Siya and what they mean to legions of ordinary South Africans.
South Africa will be returning to Lord’s, therefore, as a team representing the same, but also, a very different country. It is a more equitable country, for a start, and a country far less compromised by its long association with apartheid.
It is a country that doesn’t walk backwards into the future, as South Africa did in the dying days of apartheid, but one that scans the horizon with open eyes. We know what our problems are. They are ours to solve, whether they are our hopeless average standards of basic primary and secondary school education, or our galling “watch-while-it-simmers” attitude to the slow unravelling of neighbours Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
Is it the perfect country? No, it is not, but where do we find the perfect country. Such a country does not exist.
In the realm of sport, which is what concerns us here, it is such a different country as to almost be another country, a South Africa Mark 2, as opposed to the South Africa Mark 1 of 30-and-a-bit years ago at Lord’s.
This was a Test, remember, when a 25-year-old captain, England’s Mike Atherton, became embroiled in a muddle of his own making by either scuffing or keeping dry a cricket ball by using sand in his trouser pocket. He was a lucky man, being fined and remaining captain after beating a hasty retreat to the Lake District to escape the prying media.
Atherton is now a pillar of the English and world cricket establishment, a man who guards the soul of the game unobtrusively, without appearing to do so. An intelligent individual, attuned to the present as well as the long rhythms of change, he will interview Bavuma at Lord’s. He would be foolish not to.
In the moment – or the long moment – of being back at Lord’s, Bavuma finds himself captaining a team who have consistently surprised us. They are probably better than we think they are. Being better than we think they are doesn’t really answer the question of how good we think they are in the first place, though, does it.
This makes them a little like the Springboks going into the 2019 World Cup, a known force but, equally, an unknown quantity. This said, we can’t evade answering the question any longer: How good is Bavuma’s team?
Where does one start? One might start with sifting through what they are not. They are not a powerful batting unit, notwithstanding their 615 on a featherbed pitch in the second Test against Pakistan at Newlands.
They are not a powerful batting unit partly because no-one in the top seven bar Ryan Rickelton, and he has played only ten Tests, has a Test average of much over 40, let alone 45 or nudging 50, the benchmark for the Joe Roots and the Kane Williamsons of this world.
Such lack of stellar numbers are compounded by the fact that very seldom do we find the top six injury-free and in form at the same time, a slight concern for a team who play as little Test cricket as they do.
Take David Bedingham, who is clearly struggling with his confidence at the moment, despite his whirlwind knock opening the second innings to wrap up the Newlands Test against Pakistan. Once was the time when Bedingham (along with Bavuma, of course) could be relied upon to provide the innings with middle-order poise.
That time seems temporarily have passed; Tony de Zorzi is injured, while Rickelton is carrying a minor hamstring strain. Who is best where? It is sometimes difficult to say and such certainties are not all that helpful when you’re going into a World Cup final.
Part of the reason for the generalized uncertainty around the Proteas’ top six is their comparative inexperience. Only Aiden Markram and Bavuma of the batters have played over 50 Tests (Kagiso Rabada of the bowlers has played 70) and because the team doesn’t play that often it is difficult to get a long sighter of exactly who these players are and what they can do in a variety of conditions.
In summary, given there have been flirtations with Matthew Breetzke and Wiaan Mulder this summer, the best top six we have available for the Test team is (in batting order) as follows: De Zorzi, Markram, Rickelton, Tristan Stubbs, Bavuma and Bedingham, with Kyle Verreynne at seven.
As such, they are competitive, but I see no worryingly destructive players amongst them, no Steve Smith or Travis Head or Ben Stokes or Harry Brook. I rather fancy that batting at three might be Rickelton’s best position, although he batted in De Zorzi’s spot for his 259. Wouldn’t it be ironic if he had stumbled on his best position by happenstance and, over time, De Zorzi fades away. He certainly isn’t grabbing anyone’s attention at the moment.
Verreynne, who happily confounds expectations, has now scored four Test centuries in 24 Tests. Compare this impressive record to Mark Boucher’s. In 147 Tests, Boucher scored five Test tons at an average of fractionally over 30.
Should he continue scoring tons at the current rate, Verreynne might score 10, 12 or even 15 of them over the course of a Test career. That makes him kind of an all-rounder, a batsman in his own right who can also keep wicket, therefore a kind of functioning twelfth man. That’s pretty handy – in a variety of ways.
Although, a word of warning: as Boucher found to his horror in 1998 during his first tour of England, wicket-keeping there can be a tricky business. The ball swerves after pitching and it dies. Important pairs of eyes will be on the wicket-keeper come June and the final at Lord’s.
As we try to get to grips with how good the side is that Bavuma leads, we state the self-evident when we say that the team doesn’t lack for bowlers. They are as plentiful as a well-stocked fridge, sometimes spilling over into the deep freeze in the garage. Look carefully and we might even see a line of fast-bowlers dutifully stocked in the larder.
Nandré Burger, who we don’t hear of much anymore because of long-term injury, made his debut in Bavuma’s debut Test as skipper against the West Indies at Centurion in the late summer of 2023. We must also consider here Anrich Nortje, Gerald Coetzee, Kwena Maphaka, Corbin Bosch and, perhaps, as a candidate deep in the left-field, Beyers Swanepoel, given that he takes wickets with the ease that others pick mulberries off of trees.
Such players aside, the best bowling unit seems settled: with Jansen at eight, Keshav Maharaj batting at nine, “Brian Charles” Rabada at ten and, although he was surprisingly left out of the team that has just won the second Test against Pakistan, Dane Paterson at 11, whose control and nagging accuracy will be in demand at Lord’s.
There is another, systemic or institutional reason, why we don’t know how good Bavuma’s side is, and this is because there’s a fine side of 13 years ago still stuck in our heads. This, for the record, was the last side to win a Test series in England, when they did so in 2012, which serves to put the Proteas Test side since in some sort of broader context. It should also provide an antidote to the burgeoning excitement that is beginning to build now that we are finally in the WTC final.
Captained by Graeme Smith, it was the side of Jacques Kallis, Hashim Amla, who scored South Africa’s highest-ever Test score – 311 not out at the Oval – on that tour, AB de Villiers, Morné Morkel, Dale Steyn and Vernon Philander, with important parts also being played by Alviro Petersen and Imran Tahir.
Smith’s side have since become mythical, a team by which all other South African Test teams are judged. If Bavuma’s team are compared to Smith’s team and found lacking, it perhaps says less about them than it does about South Africa’s very own Invincibles.
Again, though, we evade the question. It might help here to take note of Bavuma’s record as skipper, which, although off a low base, is surprisingly good. He won his first two Tests in charge at home against the Windies at the Wanderers and Centurion, subsequently missing the two Tests against India because of injury, when Dean Elgar captained the side.
Neither did he play away to New Zealand and he missed the two Tests against Bangladesh later in the year – again because of injury, a theme that has shadowed his entire career – but in all other respects his record has been stellar: away series wins against the West Indies and four home wins on the trot against Sri Lanka and Pakistan this summer.
It is worth remembering here, incidentally, that the last time Sri Lanka toured South Africa, with Faf du Plessis as skipper, and Steyn and Amla still in the side if not in their stride, South Africa lost. It was the first time that the Lankans had ever won a series on South African soil and demonstrates, perhaps, that beyond a certain point you can pontificate until the ducks come home – but Test cricket is Test cricket because it is a fiendishly difficult beast to call.
In the eight Tests in which Bavuma has been skipper, four against the West Indies (two home, two away), two against Sri Lanka and two against Pakistan, he has won seven. The eighth Test, against the West Indies in Port of Spain, Guyana, last August, was drawn.
To complicate matters, South Africa have played 14 Tests under Conrad; four against the West Indies, and two each against India, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Of those 14, ten have been won, which includes two losses against the Kiwis with a conspicuously weakened side because the Proteas’ first-choice players were otherwise engaged with the SA20, a loss against India at Newlands and a draw against the West Indies in the aforementioned Test in Port of Spain.
A notable absentee in the list of Bavuma’s record as captain and Conrad’s record as coach, is a series, home or away, against Australia. As the two of them have found out now that their opponents in June’s final have been decided, sooner or later you have to confront the men of the Baggy Green, the All Blacks of the modern Test game and the current holders of the World Test Championship.
Although Bavuma himself wasn’t disgraced – 185 runs at 37 in three Tests – the Proteas were disgraced in their most recent tour to the land of the ubiquitous mullet, the Bogan and the kangaroo.
In 2022/3, with both teams still in contention for the that cycle’s World Test Championship incidentally, the Proteas lost the first Test in Brisbane, being bowled out for 99 in their second innings and arrived in Melbourne for the traditional Boxing Day Test determined to do better.
Pat Cummins won the toss at the MCG and asked South Africa to bat as they plunged to 67 for five. A sixth-wicket stand of 112 between Verreynne – here’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere – and Jansen put a thin coat of respectability on matters but the Proteas could only muster 189.
In reply, David Warner scored a double-hundred, Alex Carey scored a century and Smith, Head and Cameron Green all scored half-centuries as Australia ratcheted up 575 for eight declared at fractionally under four runs to the over.
Many stats are revealing as far as the bowling unit of Rabada, Lungi Ngidi, Jansen, Nortje and Maharaj are concerned but here’s one, chosen almost at random. Of the 145 overs bowled to the Australians in their hefty first innings, the South Africans could only muster eight maidens.
The Melbourne Test wasn’t a red-letter day for South African cricket as their batters – remember Sarel Erwee, Khaya Zondo and Theunis de Bruyn anyone – were bowled out for 204 in their second dig, with Bavuma scoring 65 of them.
They lost the second Test by an innings and 182 runs, and therefore they lost the 3-Test series with a Test to play.
Following on, they might conceivably have also lost the third at Sydney, because the entire third day was rained out. The series defeat, and its comprehensive nature, probably accounted for then coach Mark Boucher’s career, as he lost his job to Conrad shortly after returning home.
One of the first things Conrad did upon becoming coach, was to disassociate himself from Elgar, the captain in Aussie. So often the captain on the bridge of a listing if not a sinking vessel, Elgar presided over a ship that ran aground not once, not twice, but three times in Australia.
His personal form was poor, his batting mates were a rabble and there was little to recommend what could theoretically have been a defining moment in Elgar’s career. He’s a fine cricketer, but his last encounter with Aussie wasn’t his finest moment.
We started this week’s story with two very different South Africa’s returning to Lord’s 30 years apart – the South Africa of Wessels and the South Africa of Bavuma. We might equally have started the story with Bavuma’s recent encounter with Australia, which will still rankle for him and, although he wasn’t involved, probably rankle by association for Conrad.
In his 14-Test career as coach, Conrad hasn’t played against Australia, currently the best Test team in the world. When you play over five days against Australia – the WTC final has factored in a sixth reserve day, too – you not only play against Australia but you play against the weight of tradition and Australian cricket history.
This weight is considerable. It has flattened many good teams. Conrad must be wary of this without allowing it to dwarf him and his plans, which have often been rendered unstable by his instinct, which is that of a gambler’s.
Making Bavuma captain was, in a sense, a gamble, given that Bavuma is under scrutiny to a degree that others in the side are not, and although Elgar had been horrible in Australia, there were more Tests to wring out of him in a team short on experience and Test hundreds.
Batting Stubbs at four in the Test side in his debut Test against India and Jasprit Bumrah at Newlands was a gamble and, although Conrad apologised to Stubbs, it was finally a gamble that backfired.
We might even say that playing Corbin Bosch in his debut Test at Centurion against Pakistan was a slight gamble in that Bosch hadn’t really been talked about as an international cricketer until he made his ODI debut in the three one-dayers against Pakistan.
Bosch did extremely well in the first half of the Test but bowled poorly in Pakistan’s second innings and was dropped – as was Paterson – for the second Test at Newlands. What was gained? What was learned. I’m not really sure.
Conrad might yet gamble at Lord’s, which will make for an exciting ride, but it would be prudent not to. It would be prudent to play the most experienced, battle-hardened and capable side, and one which, as a secondary consideration, has something to prove after having been badly beaten in Aussie two seasons ago.
Cricket, might I add, is obsessed with the Springboks, their success and their talent for inspiring the nation to wear Faf-themed Speedos. Rugby’s important people plan, they don’t gamble. They plan to play Japan in a pre-2019 Rugby World Cup friendly, sensing there’s a likelihood of meeting them in competition play. They plan for how long it takes the coach from the hotel to the stadium, they plan who likes what energy drink and who likes which ice bath. The accent should now be on planning, turgid, unsexy planning.
Rolling the dice will only to heartbreak in the heart of homecoming in June.