“If I cramp, I’ll be cramping out there.” – Temba Bavuma
Telford Vice / Cape Town
IF this cricket gig doesn’t work out for Temba Bavuma he should consider scriptwriting. His Bloemfontein blockbuster on Thursday was, as they say in the movie business, awards worthy. It shimmered with the drama of dropped catches, the tension of tight bowling on a perfidious pitch, a ridiculous runout, a compelling comeback from a sluggish start, true grit in the face of rising cramp, and the spectacle of a century.
Even so the ending wasn’t happy for South Africa. Bavuma carried his bat for 114, more than half his team’s total of 222. But that wasn’t enough to stop Australia winning the first ODI by three wickets with two balls short of 10 overs to spare. Ah well, that’s what matinees are for: a few hours of make believe before reality rears like a monster on the horizon.
And that reality is the home side haven’t been good enough to win a match against these opponents, who reeled off three T20I successes while apparently expending about as much energy as they would have done standing in the queue for popcorn. Thursday’s performance offered evidence of improvement, but four defeats in as many matches sounds like the making of a rocky horror picture show. Especially with the opening credits of the ODI World Cup set to roll in India less than four weeks hence.
At least South Africans will always have Bavuma, who scored his third century in six innings that include an unbeaten 90. He was dropped by a diving Ashton Agar at backward point off Sean Abbott in the sixth over — when he had two runs from eight balls — and by Alex Carey off Adam Zampa in the 46th, when he had 88 off 127. Between those far apart poles Bavuma marshalled his team’s recovery from a powerplay of 25 without loss — the lowest yet in Bloemfontein — and in the face of exemplary bowling aided and abetted by a surface that bristled with variable bounce.
There was slapstick in the 12th, when Rassie van der Dussen drove Abbott to mid-off, hesitated, then called for a run and set off at speed. Bavuma, his back turned to his onrushing partner, didn’t leave his ground and lost his grip on his bat. Van der Dussen was closer to Bavuma than the crease from whence he had come when he turned like an 18-wheeler truck on an iced highway to try to scramble back to safety. He was run out by more than a metre, a fate he seemed to struggle to accept as he knelt where he had fallen for a long and tortured moment before sauntering off steaming.
Weighed down by disciplined bowling, a difficult pitch and the consequent tumble of wickets, Bavuma’s duty was to survive. Only after his team had been reduced to 185/9 in the 44th — when Bavuma had scored 79 off 118 balls with eight fours — and Lungi Ngidi, a No. 11 among No. 11s, had survived Zampa’s remaining four deliveries in that over did South Africa’s captain give himself permission to attack.
He took two boundaries and a single off the next over, bowled by Abbott, went to his century with a six and a four in the space of three balls from Zampa, and hit three more fours off Josh Hazlewood — who then ended the innings by having Ngidi caught behind.
“If I cramp, I’ll be cramping out there,” Bavuma told a television interviewer as he left the field, when he should have been on his way to the physio’s table to sort out the seized muscles that had hampered his movement and had him clutching at a hamstring towards the end of his heroic innings. Bavuma didn’t reappear for the start of Australia’s reply. He did in the eighth over but was soon back in the dressing room. Cramp, however, remains his stated issue.
When the lights came up for the interval not many in the small crowd would have imagined they would see a contest. This was a humble ODI, after all. Not a game of fantastic beasts playing quidditch. But a contest the crowd, huddling in the gathering cold of a place still wading through winter, duly had.
It didn’t seem that way while Travis Head and Mitchell Marsh were dismissing the bowling like King Kong swatted aircraft on the Empire State Building. They had shared 37 off 29 for the second wicket when Kagiso Rabada produced a pearler of an away swinger that found Marsh’s edge.
Rabada also engineered the turning point of the innings when he clanged Cameron Green on the earflap of his helmet in the 11th over. Marnus Labuschagne, something of a serial concussion substitute, replaced Green.
From there the Aussies lost five wickets for 75 runs to crash to 113/7 in the 17th. Bavuma aside, it was up to South Africa’s bowlers to keep their team in the game. And they did, with Rabada in particularly rasping form. But, on a pitch that demanded batting of Test calibre, the visitors had that in Labuschagne; a fantastic beast of sorts. He and Agar, secure in the knowledge that Australia needed just 110 off 33 overs, and were scoring at more than twice the required rate, put their team back on the straight and narrow with a stand of 112 to win the match.
The partnership might have been ended in the 34th with 32 required, when Labuschagne advanced down the pitch to Keshav Maharaj. He was well out of his ground when he edged the ball, but Quinton de Kock — his view obstructed by the batter — couldn’t do much to take the catch or break the wicket.
By then the South Africans’ heads were dropping. Having all but lost the game with the bat they fought back with the ball only to slip towards the wrong end of the equation against a team who refused to panic. They’ve been shot in that movie before and they could see the curtain coming down. If they play like this again, it won’t be the last time.
Cricbuzz
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