WTC Final: Fairytale-spoilers Australia can’t meddle with the feel-good Temba Bavuma story

Giving credit where it is due, historically, the Aussies have been single-handedly responsible for denying the cricket many feel-good bedtime stories in different languages and dialects. That changed at Lord’s on Saturday.

In years to come, kids in South African townships will be told the story of their country’s first-ever full-time black captain Temba Bavuma, whose name, in his native Xhosa, means Hope. It can’t be anybody but a soothsayer who came up with such an apt name for the 5’4″ cricketing super hero.

In years to come, kids in South African townships will be told the story of their country’s first-ever full-time black captain Bavuma, whose name, in his native Xhosa, means Hope. (AP)

What Germany is to football, Australia is to cricket. Puskas’s Hungary, Cruyff’s Total Footballers, England’s golden generation, Maradona and Messi’s Argentina, South Korea and Brazil at home – the world has often wondered how generations of German footballers are born with the knack of adding anti-climatic twists to perfectly flowing Cinderella tales.

Indian cricket fans, grudgingly, remember the Aussies for shattering many dreams. The most recent one was at the Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad. In the 2023 World Cup final, Rohit Sharma’s team was clearly the most consistent in the tournament. The hosts played an entertaining brand of cricket that made them the side that even the neutrals supported.

The Aussies, on the other hand, hobbled through the tournament. They first won against Afghanistan, another underdog people’s favourite side, by several strokes of luck and later overturned India’s apple cart. Old-timers recall how this wasn’t the first time. Twenty years back, in the 2003 World Cup final, they did the same. The dream run of Sourav Ganguly’s Fab Four too was spoiled by Ricky Ponting’s men. Ganguly, Dravid, Kumble – the stalwarts of the game – would finish their careers without an ICC trophy. The world wasn’t fair.

There are other teams who suffered similar fate. Akram’s Pakistan, Jayawardene’s Sri Lanka, McCullum’s New Zealand – to name a few – the Aussies too rarely missed the chance to prick those beautifully floating bubbles over the cricketing skies. The mighty cricketing nation is reputed to write its own scripts where the hare overruns the tortoise and Goliath pins down David. But at Lord’s, the famous Aussie efficiency failed to deliver. This time it seems they had failed to make the sporting literature poorer.

For a nation still dealing with apartheid era trauma, Temba returning home with its first major ICC trophy would mean so much to so many. A well-balanced mixed team, with no overwhelming intrigue around it, would have delighted the founding fathers of the born-again post-apartheid era South Africa.

The sight of Markram and Bavuma – a white former captain and a black present skipper – guiding the team through a tricky chase would have gladdened the divided society used to hearing whispers of racial tensions in the sporting arena. Bavuma’s men have done much more for the country’s two big goals – inclusivity and reconciliation – than what most government initiatives.

Boy from Langa

A title triumph in the game’s toughest format will also sky-rocketed the ambitions of the young cricketers growing up in Langa, the black township near Cape Town where Bavuma grew. Not too far back, this used to be a ghetto with non-existent basic amenities. After Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 and the subsequent multi-racial election in 1994, Langa saw change. The erstwhile marginalised space with match-box mud huts now has high-rise buildings with satellite discs perched on most balconies.

Langa hasn’t forgotten its past but it has certainly moved on. At the exact place where 69 black anti-apartheid protesters were killed by police bullets in 1960 is the Sharpeville massacre memorial. During a visit to Langa during India’s 2018 tour to South Africa, one could feel the reverence among the locals for the martyrs and an optimism about the new life they gifted them.

But Langa was bitter about the outside world’s attitude towards their cricket and cricketers. That was the time, Bavuma had been dropped for the India Test in his own backyard – Newlands, Cape Town.

Among those at the stadium disappointed by the playing XI selection was Cagew Ezra. He was 65 but looked barely 50. He had been tasked by the Western Province Cricket to develop cricket in black townships. Unofficially, he had kept an eye on Langa’s bright young cricketers for ages. He was at the non-striker end, when Bavuma, just 13, came up with his coming-of-age match-winning knock for Langa CC.

That day Ezra, a Black, knew Bavuma was special and he would take him under his wings. Passing cricketing wisdom to the next generation happens to be the age-old Langa tradition that Bavuma benefitted from. These timely tutorials by multiple experts shooting the breeze around Langa would make Bavuma change opinions and perceptions in South Africa.

He would go on to prove that Black cricketers didn’t take up the sport just to bowl at white and coloured players. Bavuma showed that players from townships can bat too. He would become the first black cricketer to score a Test hundred for South Africa and also get their first big ICC event high. “Temba is a big role model because every kid feels that I will get there one day,” Ezra would say.

Bavuma’s big test as a leader came up in the 2021 World T20 tournament where his close friend Quinton de Kock didn’t take the knee, the symbolic support for the Black Lives Matter movement. This was a ticking time-bomb, a PR disaster waiting to happen. The world called de Kock’s stand insensitive, but Bavuma didn’t rush to pass judgement nor was he tongue-tied.

“My beliefs, the way that I see things, is shaped by my own experience and background, and so is the other person’s. If there is a disagreement in terms of beliefs, in terms of views, that’s why we have those hard conversations. Through those conversations, we will be able to get the comfort to accept the other person’s decision. I can’t force anyone to see things the way I do, neither can they force me to,” he would say.

That day Bavuma rose in stature, from a shrewd captain he became a statesman. On Saturday, he ticked that box too. His was too good a story to have a tragic end.