STUART HESS | Temba Bavuma: captain fantastic

Temba Bavuma smiles more these days. He can afford to.

He leads Test cricket’s best team. They never lose when he’s around. Newlands, Kingsmead, St George’s Park, Lord’s, Guwahati and Eden Gardens. Bavuma’s Proteas turn up and all they do is win, win, win, no matter what.

Lose the toss, win. Spinning pitch, win. Face a bowling attack with over 1,200 Test wickets between them, as was the case in the World Test Championship final, win.

This is what Bavuma, with help from Shukri Conrad, has instilled. He won’t boast. He can’t — it’s not in his nature, but the silverware, the batting average as captain and the unbeaten streak under his leadership are all reasons to gloat.

The Proteas team is one that is very much in Bavuma’s image. It’s not obvious, but that is very Bavuma. Throughout his career, whether because of his race, where he grew up, his stature, his general soft-spokenness or the fact that he didn’t average 40, Bavuma’s been undermined.

Since he took over as captain, so has his team.

There was the blaring refrain that the Proteas were undeserving of their spot in the World Test Championship final because they didn’t face supposedly worthy opponents en route. No one gave them a chance against Australia at Lord’s.

There was the blaring refrain that the Proteas were undeserving of their spot in the World Test Championship final because they didn’t face supposedly worthy opponents en route. No one gave them a chance against Australia at Lord’s.

Then having won it, the calls went out that they wouldn’t be able to defend it, because the schedule for the 2027 cycle — which included tours to Pakistan and India — wasn’t as friendly as 2025.

And yet the personality of this team — mimicking that of its captain — was clearly illustrated in the two highlights of their year: Lord’s and Eden Gardens.

Against Australia the naysayers basked in the apparent fulfilment of their pre-match forecasts when South Africa ended the first day of the WTC final on 43/4. But Bavuma led the fightback even as his side trailed by 74 runs after the first innings.

Then, chasing a total never before achieved to win a Test at Lord’s, Bavuma, with an injured hamstring, hobbled to a half-century, sharing what turned into the match-winning partnership with Aiden Markram.

Bavuma is a tough nut, and his teammates would be damned if they weren’t going to follow his example.

Eden Gardens was a demonstration of his great skill and patience as a batter. India had prepared a surface at its most famous venue that South African sides of yesteryear were freaked out by.

But in the second innings Bavuma held firm, carefully playing the spinners, once more marshalling a partnership — this time with Corbin Bosch — that dragged South Africa towards a small, but defendable total.

He was the only batter to score a half-century in that Test, and the knowledgeable patrons at Eden Gardens rose to applause the man their own players had mocked because of his height on the first day.

AB de Villiers, who shared a changeroom with Bavuma’s in his early years with the Proteas, provided some insight about how Bavuma is perceived. De Villiers, who also captained the Proteas, told former Indian player Ravi Ashwin in a podcast that he had had reservations about Bavuma being made Test captain. “He doesn’t look like this big Graeme Smith with the aura and intimidating presence. Temba is a small, soft-spoken guy; he hardly ever raises his voice. It shows you that different styles of captaincy can be successful.”

Bavuma has risen above the juvenile insults and the talk about the things he supposedly cannot do and become what many overseas commentators have called the most “dignified captain in the game”.

He was asked after South Africa won the second Test against India last week — and with it a Test series in that country for the first time in 25 years — to describe his captaincy style. He outlined how it was aligned to his maturity; that now, aged 35, and with a two-year-old son, he was “really assured of myself as a person”.

Bavuma has risen above the juvenile insults and the talk about the things he supposedly cannot do and become what many overseas commentators have called the most “dignified captain in the game”

Bavuma doesn’t feel he needs to constantly prove himself, although since being made captain he has produced the best form of his career with the bat. Since 2023, he averages 53.31 — compared to an overall Test average of 38.10 — scoring three of his four Test centuries in that period while continuing the habit of producing match-defining innings, even if they aren’t of the three-figure variety.

“Something I have been able to learn in the last few years is being able to separate the captaincy and me being a batter. It’s important that you are able to do your primary skill as well as you can. Guys generally follow what they see and not what you tell them. l always try to ensure from a batting point of view that I am contributing as much as I can,” said Bavuma.

It certainly worked. One of this current team’s traits is sharing the run-scoring load among a variety of players, with nine different batters scoring hundreds this year alone.

They’re also unique in how they’ve not been afraid to chop and change to suit the style required for conditions and opponents.

So while India decided to play four spinners on a dry, deteriorating surface at Eden Gardens, South Africa started with only Simon Harmer and Keshav Maharaj. For the second Test, on a batter-friendly pitch, they dropped Bosch, who’d played a crucial role with the bat in the first Test, for a better batter in Senuran Muthusamy, who went on to score a hundred.

“Within the team it’s about making sure we are moving in a certain direction as a unit and I set that vision clearly. But there are other guys who help me to make sure we are all on the same page,” said Bavuma.

He mentioned Markram — who has captained the side when Bavuma’s been out with injury — Maharaj and Kagiso Rabada as trusted lieutenants. They will also often help to fill the gap vocally when the dressing room needs to be revved up before a session of play, while also providing a tactical sounding board for Bavuma.

He encouraged the healthy competition that arose between Maharaj and fellow spinner Harmer in India, and their success drove the intensity that the team needed.

Proving others wrong will continue to drive Bavuma and this group. A summer devoid of Test cricket at home this season will be replaced by a season filled with matches, notably against Australia and England.

It will be Australia’s first meeting with South Africa since the World Test Championship final, and it is certain the talk in the lead up will be about South Africa having to prove that the Lord’s triumph wasn’t a one-off.

South Africans are generally riled up by the English, and with a poor record against them in the last decade, along with not having beaten them in a series in South Africa this millennium, the hype for that tour will be sky high.

The spotlight on Bavuma will be glaring. But he’s become accustomed to that. He is learning to thrive in it too, and because he is, so is the team he leads.

The Bavuma of 2025 is very different to the one that took his first steps into the national side in 2014. Back then he did not understand the magnitude of what his selection signalled.

Even though he made important runs and made crucial contributions to series wins in Australia and New Zealand, he was never properly recognised.

He didn’t make hundreds, so he wasn’t a proper Test batter; he didn’t talk loudly enough and so he could never be a proper Test captain. His team — other than Rabada — didn’t have the kind of stars that used to pack the Proteas, they didn’t bat well enough and they didn’t sledge hard.

Yet everything Bavuma supposedly couldn’t do, and what his team apparently didn’t do, is what has made them so damn good.