The Temba way: Neither accident nor fluke

Hindustan Times

5 hours ago

The Test Championship Mace did not exist in cricket's early years before the two World Wars, the golden age in the 1970s and 1980s, and the era of the sport's physical and mental transformation in the 1990s and 2000s. But one can imagine Don Bradman lifting the crown as captain of The Invincibles, or Clive Lloyd and Vivian Richards being hailed as champion leaders with West Indies in the 1970s and 1980s, or Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting in the 1990s and 2000s, and perhaps even Imran Khan and Sourav Ganguly briefly in the middle of the Australian and Caribbean domination.
Last week, when South Africa were crowned champions — in a final they weren't expected to be in, against a team they weren't supposed to beat — the jewelled mace was handed to a relatively nondescript cricketer from Cape Town. Forget the larger-than-life Bradmans and the Lloyds we were just talking about, the names etched on cricket's belated but most coveted crown are batting icon Kane Williamson of New Zealand, bowling royalty Pat Cummins of Australia, and batter Temba Bavuma.
From a distance, it may have seemed like a sporting accident or a strange fluke. But, trust me, that's never true.
Life and times
The modest Bavuma household in Langa, a cricket-crazy suburb of Cape Town about 20 minutes from Newlands, was blessed with a boy at a time when South Africa was in the throes of change. It was 1990, and the shadow of Apartheid was starting to recede at last. Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison just three months earlier. The national cricket team would be reintroduced to the world in a one-day series in India the following year. There were new opportunities and new possibilities on the horizon. In keeping with the times, the boy was named Temba, or hope, in Zulu.
The rise of Temba Bavuma over the next three decades was nothing short of a cricketing fairytale. He was the first Black batsman to get into the national team in 2014, and the first full-time Black African captain in 2022. But his journey was often undermined by critics; prefixed with that dreaded Q-word in South African cricket.
Did he deserve a place in the team, as the early Test century against England suggested, or was he a 'quota pick' in a new political climate? Did he deserve to be skipper, or was a 'quota captain' at a time when the government wanted to prove that Black men can not only jump and bowl, but also bat and lead?
Those questions need not be asked again. Though Bavuma may have a career Test average below 40, he not only top-scored for South Africa in the latest World Test Championship cycle with 711 runs in eight Tests, he had the highest average at 59.25. And though his leadership may have sometimes appeared passive or overly defensive, he is the most successful captain in history after 10 Tests – 9 wins, 1 tie, no draws or losses.
So, what is it that makes Bavuma tick?
The answer perhaps comes from the Rainbow Nation that Mandela envisioned, and Bavuma's arrival in it at a time when the dream was being brought to fruition.
More on that in a bit.
Oh captain, my captain
Mike Brearley played 39 Tests for England. In 31 of them, he was captain. He won 18 Tests and lost only four. Over his Test career, he averaged 22.88 with the bat and never bowled. He was considered such a leader of men that he was kept in the team just for that. He went on to write The Art of Captaincy (1985) and later became a psychoanalyst.
Brearley may not have made it in modern cricket, which carries no passengers, even if they are the captain. But his treatise on leadership is riveting because there is no data, other than wins and losses, to truly measure captaincy.
Cricket may have incorporated the concept of coaches over the last few decades, but for all intents and purposes, the duties of a manager in other team sports lie with the captain in the gentleman's game. The reason is simple: the workload on players in other team sports is too much for them to dictate wider strategy. Lionel Messi as a Barcelona forward had so much to do on his own that he couldn't be expected to run over to Carles Puyol in central defence to give directions or offer advice. It required someone on the sidelines, with a sense of the entire flow of the match, to call the shots.
In cricket, where you watch from the dressing room while your colleagues are at the crease, where you breathe between deliveries, and where you deliberate between overs, the coach is just a sounding board – the captain, with a feel of the pitch and a sense of the dressing room, is the best placed to call the shots. In many ways, the job is harder than that of a football manager who needs to worry about strategy but not about scoring or defending.
The Bavuma blend
Different captains over the decades have managed leadership differently. In India, for instance, Ganguly was a kind of skipper who got down and dirty with the team. He knew what he wanted, and he created an atmosphere where his players knew they could count on him to protect them. If the team was in a ditch, Ganguly would jump in and say, let's dig ourselves out together. Rahul Dravid, who replaced him, was the kind who led by the example of his own excellence. He wouldn't jump into the ditch but throw in a rope and try to pull the team out. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was more individualistic and certain of himself. In the ditch analogy, Dhoni would jump in, ask the others to step aside, and dig them out himself.
Each style is effective, and successful cricket captains usually fall into one of those categories or are a loose combination of these philosophies.
But the Bavuma blend is different. It stems from how he draws on different strands from his life – his birth into a rejuvenated nation that wanted to unify rather than seek revenge, his rise as a batsman at a time when his peers thought he was being favoured, his burning desire (like that of any South African cricketer) to get the team to finally win big tournaments, and the constant awareness that he is a pioneer for his entire race – to inform and shape his captaincy.
His leadership style was reflected in how he slowed down his own scoring on the first evening of the WTC final and then let loose on the second morning; how he moved his bowlers around in the first session of the second innings; and how his team held their catches. It was self-assured and unaffected by criticism, but he made it feel like captaincy by committee.
'There'll always be the essence of putting the team first, but I try to make sure my game is in order then try to empower the guys around me,' Bavuma, a short man in a team of giants, told reporters on the eve of the final. 'It becomes a collective leadership style.'
It was nice of him to say that. The Temba way.