The Temba way: Neither accident nor fluke

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.

- Kunal Pradhan

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.