Self-assurance at its highest ebb, Bavuma a player reborn as ‘small hands’ and strong instincts come good in key situations.
With ‘small hands’ and strong instincts, Bavuma shows self-assurance of a player at his peak.
A captain may occasionally have a gut feeling about what to do. Temba Bavuma had one of those moments on a stressful third day, with tea approaching at Eden Gardens.
With three wickets remaining, India required 47 runs. Due to Shubman Gill’s injury-induced absence, they actually only had two. Axar Patel, a left-handed hitter, was on strike. He appeared consistent but not really dangerous, scoring 10 runs off 12 balls. It made sense to maintain Aiden Markram and apply pressure because his three overs had only cost five runs and he had taken a wicket. Bavuma thought otherwise.
Bavuma used his left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj despite the danger of turning the ball into Axar. It appeared to be a brilliant idea right away.
The offer was too much for Axar to resist, and he slog-swept Maharaj to deep midwicket, where Ryan Rickelton was set up for a shot. However, Rickelton lost the ball because he was staring into the sun and his vision might have been obscured by onlookers. With so few runs available, Bavuma’s choice appeared to be a tactical error when what could have been a catch turned into a boundary.
It got even worse when Axar hit Maharaj for two sixes in the next three balls and shaved off a third of what India needed in four balls and wasn’t done.
Axar made another slog sweep off the sixth ball, but this time he top-edged it. For the longest few seconds of the previous three days, the ball dangled and then dropped into the Kolkata air.
At first, it appeared like Bavuma had raced too far as he dashed from midwicket to nearly long-on. Looking back, he managed to get his self-described “small hands” on the ball and hold on with his fingertips when it was almost behind him.
When he did, Bavuma also demonstrated his own strategy, which had appeared to be failing during the preceding four balls. For the majority of this game, Bavuma played in that manner.
After being dismissed for three by Kuldeep Yadav’s leg-side trap in the first innings, Bavuma rewrote his role in the game with a match-winning 55 not out in the second innings, displaying the confidence of a player at his best. Variable bounce and what Bavuma referred to as “spin that was a little bit on the extreme side yesterday” caused confusion in their game plans, as no other batter scored more than 39 during the game.
The way Bavuma handled pressure in the early going was one of the main distinctions between his innings and everyone else’s. The spinners, who were excellent at pressuring South Africa, delivered 17 of the first 23 balls he faced, and he only managed to score four runs.
He defended 59 of the 136 balls he saw overall, most of which came on the second night when South Africa’s shot selection was subpar. Wiaan Mulder and Tony de Zorzi were eliminated by excessive bounce, Ryan Rickelton and Tristan Stubbs were eliminated by lack of turn, Markram swept directly to short leg, and Kyle Verreynne and Marco Jansen made terrible slog sweeps. Overnight, Bavuma was on 29 off 78 balls. A sweep off Ravindra Jadeja and a backfoot punch off Kuldeep Yadav that went for four were his only two forceful strokes.
When he hit his half-century on Sunday, the over 40,000 spectators gave him a standing ovation, demonstrating that he had accomplished something exceptional. It was evident that the Kolkata supporters valued South Africa’s efforts, and Bavuma might have won them over, even though his catch later on stunned them into silence.
And occasionally you wind up with an outcome similar to South Africa’s when you feel like things are going your way.