Opinion: Bavuma scores too slowly. Fact: Bavuma’s strike rate is higher than most T20I openers of his generation.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
RARELY does a collision between fact and opinion in sport end happily. Temba Bavuma will know that. So will Mark Boucher. The opinion is that Bavuma scores too slowly in T20I cricket. The relevant facts, as Boucher laid them out at a press conference on Tuesday, say otherwise.
The only players among the 22 who took guard during South Africa’s drawn series in India who finished with a lower strike rate than Bavuma’s 103.38 were Tabraiz Shamsi, Marco Jansen, Lungi Ngidi and Anrich Nortjé. Bavuma’s performance stuck out, and not in a good way.
“Temba struggled during the tour, there’s no doubt,” Boucher said. “As coaches, we sit down and think, ‘Why did he struggle?’ But he really struggled against one bowler and that was [Bhuvneshwar] Kumar. Most of the guys struggled against him. Let’s give him credit where it’s due. Kumar is a fantastic bowler in those conditions. There were times when the ball was swinging a lot, which made him very dangerous. Also the bounce was up and down a lot, especially with the new ball.”
Bavuma scored 13 runs off the 25 deliveries he faced from king of swing Kumar: a strike rate of 52.00. Against the rest of India’s attack he made 48 off 34: a tempo of 141.18. Kumar’s economy rate of 6.07 was the best in the series — Lungi Ngidi’s was 5.77 but he bowled just 4.3 overs. India’s other bowlers combined had an economy rate of 8.03, almost two runs an over higher than Kumar’s. Only Harshal Patel’s strike rate of 10.4 was better than Kumar’s 14; Ngidi’s 6.7 excepted. Thus Kumar is isolated as the problem. But he isn’t going anywhere: the South Africans will doubtless have to contend with him again in Perth on October 30, when the teams are set to clash in the T20I World Cup.
“We look at it as coaches and say how do we have a look at that particular bowler and how do we give [Bavuma] more options? With other bowlers his strike rates are fine. There is no major concern from my side. He will know that he wants to score better and quicker. If you look at the teams around the world, there’s maybe one or two players in your top sides where there’s space for … I wouldn’t say a nudger, nurdler; there’s no space for a nudger, nurdler in today’s cricket … but certainly for a stabiliser in the innings. We see [Bavuma] in that mould. His stats outside the powerplay are very good. It’s just one little period of play and against one particular bowler that we need to work on. We’ve got a plan with regards to that.”
Bavuma’s career strike rate during the powerplay is 103.33. Outside the powerplay it’s 134.76. Boucher was confident Bavuma would respond positively to the coaches’ attempts to even that score, and push it higher: “Temba loves being challenged. He wants to work on his game; he wants to improve. I’ve got no doubt that given a bit of time, when we get him to a bowling machine and work on a couple of things, he will come through. He is a tough character and someone we need in our team. As coaches we are going to be working extremely hard to get him right against that particular bowling style.”
Twenty-two other players have opened the batting in T20Is as often or more than Bavuma since he did so for the first time in February 2020. Eight of them have had a better career strike rate in the position than Bavuma’s 128.57 as an opener. West Indian Evin Lewis is at the top of the list with 155.73. Malta’s Bikram Arora brings up the rear with 98.31. Five are striking above 140 — including Quinton de Kock, Bavuma’s opening partner — and two others above 130. Seven are in the 120s, and eight below that. The average, including Bavuma’s performance, is 124.70 — almost four runs slower than Bavuma. How much did this swirl of stats matter?
“There should be a number,” Boucher said. “As a player, you want to set yourself a goal. People sometimes look at it in its entirety and say you need to strike more, but how do you get to striking that? Is it just about giving a player one more option to score? How do you set yourself up? We’ve had conversations about your first 10 balls that you face. What’s your goal? Is it 10 off 10 or 14 off 10? It’s one boundary extra that you’re looking at, and 14 off 10 is [a strike rate of] 140.
“The margins are not as big people think. It’s maybe just another scoring option [that’s required]. There’s certain conditions where you’ve just got to be smart and play it how you see it — whether you’re chasing a high total or a low total, all those things can come into play. It’s about giving players the different options that they need.
“We did it last year with regards to scoring all around the wicket. You would have seen reverse sweeps come in; guys who have never lapped before, they’ve got the lap option and the reverse lap. If you give batters one or two more options, it’s challenging players and also pushing them to become the best in the world. It’s very necessary. It’s also about mindset. Some guys are not used to going out there and taking a risk in the first six balls. You might think it’s near impossible for a guy to get to a strike rate 140 if he is at 120, but it could be about merely adding another shot to his repertoire.”
Boucher said the split between the mental and technical requirements to enable players to make leaps like that successfully and consistently was skewed “80-20” in favour of the mental aspect: “You need to have the know-how to play a shot and an option. You’re mindset’s got to be, ‘I’ve got to try and move my strike rate up a bit. I’ve got to be open to that.’ Once you get the confidence of adding that extra shot to your batting, or ball to your bowling, it’s having the mindset to go out there and really trust it. We want to be smart. We don’t want to just go out there and play maverick cricket. We have conversations after every game about how we can get better, not only from a technical but from a mindset position as well.”
That discussion would have been different after the matches in Delhi and Cuttack, when the South Africans held their nerve and reeled in the targets, compared to the games in Visakhapatnam and Rajkot, when they seemed to lose focus at the crease and paid the price.
“We almost didn’t want to pull the trigger and put their bowlers under pressure,” Boucher said of the Vizag match, when South Africa were dismissed for 131 chasing 180. The target was 170 in Rajkot, where the visitors crashed to 87 all out. “The chat was, ‘Let’s go out playing our new way rather than going back to our default that we were guilty of a year or so ago.’ You’re not going to win World Cups with a mindset where you are tentative. You’ve got to go out there and play. Other teams in the world have shown us how to play — India and England. That’s really the way forward, especially in the shorter version of the game.”
As a respected and popular leader, Bavuma is central to guiding South Africa on that journey. But first he will need to get over the elbow injury that forced him to retire hurt in Rajkot and prompted his withdrawal from Sunday’s washout. Boucher said Bavuma was due to have his elbow scanned on Tuesday: “We were really worried after the injury because he couldn’t bend his arm at all. But the next morning he was able to bend it, so that was some good news.”
Bavuma’s full return to fitness in time for the tour to England, which starts in three weeks’ time, would be even better news. That and an upward trend in his strike rate.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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