From 0 to 100 real quick as Temba Bavuma ended the drought and scored a marvellous second Test ton at the Bullring in the second Test.
The newly appointed skipper got a pair on his captaincy debut in the first Test match at Centurion last week and copped a fair bit of criticism as he usually does.
But if you know Bavuma you’d know he’s not one to pay attention to the outside noise, he’s one of the calmest and most collected sports personalities and seems to thrive under the immense pressure he always finds himself in.
Apart from being the only Proteas batter currently to average 40 in the format in the last few years, he’s also been their best batter.
“For me, it was just to try and stay within my game plan. Obviously the situation as well kind of forced me to do that. I tried to play the ball a lot later using my singles to keep rotating the strike and I think that was probably where from a batting point of view everything kind of revolved around looking to get off strike and then when the bad ball came I tried to put it away.”
It’s been more than 2000 days since his first Test ton in 2016 at the picturesque Newlands against England.
Despite that, it’s not been all doom and gloom for the middle-order batter who has now scored 20 half-centuries. Although failing to convert those starts, he has come pretty close but somehow ran out of partners. The wait however was worth it… a long 7 years.
Ian Bishop in commentary described the moments leading up to the Proteas skipper’s hundred as “spine-tingling” and that he’s never seen a media centre and commentary box that anxious.
The skipper once again found himself in the middle with the Proteas in a spot of bother on 32 for 3 and once again dug them out of a hole and possibly played a match-winning inning.
They slipped to 69 for 4 and even to 103 for 5. Even more special than that, he went on and made it count, to raise his bat for his second long-awaited hundred. I don’t know how the skipper was feeling, but it was tension all around when he reached the 90s.
“That was my takeaway from that series (Australia series) coming up against that bowling attack in those sorts of conditions really tested you. It really asked for the best of you. I’ve tried to take on the learnings, not just here in the Test stuff but even in the one-day stuff. The main thing is to put pressure on the howlers. You can’t just sit and wait for a half volley you need to find a way to score off the good balls as well.”
His father and mother watched on, and the commentators were sitting at the edge of their seats, it was tense, but the pure ecstasy when he smashed an Alzarri Joseph delivery over cover to get to the milestone cannot be put into words.
An entire nation breathed a sigh of relief and then celebrated. Even Wiaan Mulder at the other end was elated.
“The emotions. I think I froze a bit, it’s special.” Bavuma said.
The skipper continued and said that the West Indies has always been a team he’s followed and there was a lot of sentiment to this innings as we saw how Brian Lara acknowledged him as he walked off after the day’s play.
He ended the day on 171 not out with the Proteas in a commanding position ahead by 356 runs. Dare we dream?
