Bavuma, Jansen, Harmer bring South Africa back from the brink
Day 3 in Gqeberha belonged to South Africa's valiant fight from a tricky position
We’re in the second hour after lunch at St George’s Park on Tuesday, and edginess grips the ground. A chill, spurred by the easterly knifing in from the Indian Ocean, assails the air. Spectators take shallow breaths. Clouds gather, also anxious. The light, bright earlier, is as sharp as it is dull.
“Should we go back to our seats?” The question comes from among a gaggle of schoolboys who have come down from the heights of the Duckpond Pavilion to be nearer the boundary. And closer to the moment. “We should go back to our seats.”
Not one of them moves. The moment is too close. What if you miss it because your back is turned while you’re going up the stairs? That would stay with you forever, and not in a good way.
Pat Cummins sets off from the Duckpond End, a thoroughbred on the hoof. Waiting for him at the Park Drive End of the pitch is Temba Bavuma. His eyes are level just above the top bar of the grille on his helmet. He widens those eyes, scrunches his lips, taps his bat, and settles into his stance; back as straight as can be, elbows cocked, feet planted wide. Ready? Ready …
Cummins reaches the bowling crease and sweeps into his clean action. Short. The ball gets to Bavuma around shoulder height. He pulls. Muscles ripple and rip through cold grey air. The stroke drips with irresistibility and consequence.
Bat meets ball. The contact is as solid as the earth beneath Bavuma’s feet. A crack rents the swollen stillness. Ball leaves bat. It’s in the air to start with but there’s no catching it. Nor stopping it. Four …
South Africa were 12/2 when Bavuma was yanked to the crease after the fire-breathing, wicket-eating Scott Boland bowling Aiden Markram off the edge and had David Bedingham taken behind with consecutive and contrasting deliveries in the midst of Sunday’s gloaming.
Before Monday’s play was out Bavuma saw Test cricket get big on Matthew Breetzke, who flayed wide of his body to Mitchell Starc and was caught behind, and he saw Matt Renshaw conjure an impossible slip catch to snuff out a stand of 52 with Ryan Rickelton in the fourth over before stumps.
South Africa were 97/5 when they limped to the dressing room. Given that rain and a wet outfield had limited play on the first two days to an effective session-and-a-half, the home side would surely struggle to win?
Asked that question at a press conference on Monday, Ashwell Prince smiled benevolently. Or maybe he did so out of amazement that he should be asked such a thing. “We still have to bowl,” he said, and spoke of how the edges of divots in the rain-softened but spicy surface could harden and make batting challenging.
Was it revealing that the immediate response from South Africa’s batting coach was to hope the bowlers could dig the side out of a hole? That said, he did add that “the skipper is out there digging deep” and that “it’s an opportunity for people to make a name for themselves”.
No doubt Prince didn’t mean little could be expected from what batting the team had left, but many would have seen it that way. They would have been wrong.
Of a stand of 132 off 186, Marco Jansen hit 85 off 100 and Bavuma 45 off 86. Please forgive the lapse into white-ball speak. It was that kind of partnership, particularly by Jansen and his big, booming strokeplay. But Test, rather than white-ball, batting it was absolutely. Especially down the ground. Jansen made 85 before blooping Boland to short midwicket, which brought Simon Harmer to the wicket.
Bavuma was 88. Could Harmer make enough of a name for himself to help his captain score a century? He did more than that. He helped Bavuma put on 183, a South Africa record for the eighth wicket against any opposition, home and away.
But back to Bavuma’s pulled four off Cummins. It crosses the cushions. Off comes the helmet. Up goes the bat. Out comes the emotion. A fifth Test hundred is his. Harmer is beside himself with adulation. Love tumbles from the stands.
Later, after four o’clock, it’s properly cold and steadily darkening under the blazing floodlights. But there is warmth and light in the stands. The band, ensconced as usual in the embrace of the old Western Stand, are deep in the delirium of one of those endlessly rolling riffs, happily trapped in a labyrinth of sound and rhythm and movement and joy for what feels like days, emerging from one song and loping straight into the next without, it seems, wondering what to play next or indeed bothering to draw breath.
A giddy crowd have ranged themselves further down the stand in front of the musicians. Their dancing is simple, organic and beautiful. If this is where you are able to be on a random Tuesday what could there possibly be to worry about?
Bavuma and Harmer are still out there, gleaming in the gloom. It seems an age since Boland was a fast bowler scary enough to take 5/57 in his first 22 overs. His next 39 balls go for 23 runs, six of them launched over square leg by Harmer.
Marnus Labuschagne, of all people, ends a stand of 183 by bowling a slog-sweeping Harmer for a career-best 82 with the last delivery of that over. The first of the next, bowled by Starc, takes a defending Bavuma’s edge and is caught by a diving Alex Carey.
After more than nine hours and 334 balls it’s over. Bavuma has taken his team from doldrums to domination. He arrived on a hattrick and left on a hattrick, and made 179 — his highest score — along the way. There seems to be an instant of vacillation from Bavuma before he declares. From 12/2 and 92/5 to 425/9 is a hell of a journey. Bavuma leaves to a clutch of Australian handshakes and a crescendo from his compatriots.
Here’s Kagiso Rabada, ready to bowl his first ball in anger for more than four-and-a-half months because of downtime and a hamstring injury. Nic Maddinson is able to leave the opening delivery, and does. The next beats his driving bat. The third is poked into the covers. The fourth, an away-swinger, is steered into third slip’s hands. Welcome back KG. So long Mad Dog.
Twenty balls later, all but two of them bowled by spinners, the day is done. It’s South Africa’s unquestionably. It’s also Bavuma’s, Jansen’s and Harmer’s. And the band’s. As well as the fans’. It’s even the Australians’ - they had to make do without an ill Josh Hazlewood for most of South Africa’s innings. Sometimes cricket can be all that, and more.
