Temba Bavuma will remember the fourth day of his fifth Test match for a long time. His team was staring down the barrel with no sign of light at the end of it. Crushed under the weight of 481 runs and just below two days to survive, the 25-year old middle order batsman was thrust into the deep waters, and given the responsibility of opening the batting for South Africa.
The instructions were clear – forget everything else and just focus on staying at the wicket. And Bavuma did. He gritted it out for over two hours, in conditions alien to him, at a batting position strange to him. Despite losing his opening partner, Dean Elgar early, Bavuma held fort, followed his captain’s footprints. Together he and Hashim Amla saw off the Indian spinners for over 38 overs, before Bavuma got a peach of a delivery from R Ashwin and departed for 34 off 117 balls.
Bavuma will look back at this batting effort of his with pride for years to come. “To be honest, that was the toughest piece of batting I’ve ever had to do in my life,” he said. “I am always trying to score and be positive against spinners.
“Having to go against that was the toughest thing; going against your natural instincts as a batter is the toughest part. Understanding the main thing here is time, not the runs. So batting time, especially for a young, inexperienced guy like me, that is tough.I can take out a lot of positives from my batting experience, and hopefully I can grow from that,” he said.
It was the first of its kind experience for Bavuma, and after watching the first three Tests of the series from a distance, he finally had the taste of the pressure the Indian spinners put on the batsmen.
“The guys make quite a lot of noise, they are known for their theatre around the bat, and arealways trying to put you under pressure always trying to force you to play out character,” he said.“I think that just comes with the game, and just makes it a bit more enjoyable.”
“For me, this trip has been great. I have certainly been taken out of my comfort zone. I have been asked to fulfil a job that is hard; opening is not the easiest thing. The experience for me has been great and can take a lot of strides out of it. Hopefully I can just grow to higher levels from here on.”
While Bavuma’s tour is effectively over, there is still a hard task at hand for the other South African batsmen. With HashimAmla and AB de Villiers at the crease, they have to bat out three sessions to salvage some pride from this otherwise catastrophic series.
“It’s a tough ask, asking guys to bat 90 overs. It will be day five, so we expectthe wicket to deteriorate even more,” Bavuma said. “But we have the experience and the skills. Whatever happens, we will go down fighting. You see Hash there, he’s laid down his mark. AB is also still there, we still have Faf and Dane Vilas, so we will definitely carry on the spirit, and try our best to salvage a draw out of this game.”
