Bavuma outlasts Cummins with century that may turn the series

Gqeberha: Not long after tea on day three at St George’s Park, the chant of “Oh Temba Bavuma” rang out to the tune of Seven Nation Army.

While the total crowd at the ground was puny, the chant was appropriate. The same tune had done the rounds when South Africa upset Australia to claim the World Test Championship final at Lord’s last year, and here it rang as loudly in the tourists’ tiring ears as the Gqeberha house band.

The White Stripes, of course, were famed for making a helluva racket for a duo. Bavuma is making a habit of having a massive impact for one so, well, short.

From 6-110 when Mitchell Starc claimed his 450th Test wicket in the first hour of play, South Africa’s captain Bavuma had stopped Australia in their pace-bowling tracks with a masterful innings that has ensured the series will still be alive when the teams travel to Cape Town for the finale.

With significant help from the freewheeling Marco Jansen and the more sedate Simon Harmer, Bavuma turned this into quite the sobering day for Pat Cummins’ team, who were rendered short of ideas even when reinforced by Josh Hazlewood after his bout of stomach trouble.

After Bavuma had the luxury of declaring at 9-425, Australia lost Nic Maddinson to Kagiso Rabada for a duck in floodlight to be 1-3 at the close.

They were not the first Australian side to look similarly bereft in the Eastern Cape. Ask any of Ryan Harris, Peter Siddle, Mitchell Johnson or Starc, Cummins or Hazlewood about the kind of pitch they have experienced at St George’s Park, and they will likely remark that it is slow and flat.

Harris, Johnson and Siddle returned a combined 6-443 here in 2014, figures not much uglier than those now owned by Starc, Cummins and Siddle over two matches here separated by eight years.

Scott Boland’s superb analysis over the first two days was also pushed in a more modest direction on day three, but in truth Australia appeared to need more bowlers in his mould. Though it had been Nathan Lyon who made way for Boland, the other seamer who may have been suited here was Michael Neser, who has had to be content with bowling in the nets and sitting at or near the top of the tourists’ golf tournament leaderboard.

For all their pace and bounce, well suited to the first Test in Durban, Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood were handled expertly by Bavuma. That may not be a surprise given his outstanding displays both on home soil (this was his fifth Test hundred, all made in South Africa), and as skipper (averaging 50 plus as leader).

Much is made of Bavuma’s diminutive stature, but he is built of similar dimensions to numerous batting masters: Sachin Tendulkar, Gundappa Viswanath, Sir Donald Bradman and Brian Lara. Like them, he makes the most of his ability to get under the ball in either defence or attack.

But Bavuma is also an inveterate fighter, who trained assiduously for this task. He spent countless hours in the nets before the game, working on whatever extra he needed to find after a pair of low scores at Kingsmead. Asked about what he had been looking for, Bavuma answered thoughtfully.

“I’ve been struggling for rhythm since the start of the season,” he said. “I guess that’s a result of not having played for a while and then coming up against a quality attack like that, so me being in the nets was always trying to find that feeling.

“I don’t know how else I could explain it, not so much from a technical point of view, but just a feeling that I could hold on to and be able to compete out there. Have I gotten that feeling? I guess throughout the innings, I kind of … battled through it, found some fluency, and obviously found a game plan as well, which I stuck to.”

It had all looked so different. Starc’s 450th came with a hostile bouncer that grazed Wiaan Mulder’s glove, the caught behind decision upheld via DRS review. Boland was still getting the ball to move, and a slim Proteas total felt close to inevitable.

Instead, Bavuma willed the day in another direction. He was aided mightily by Marco Jansen, who played with the same fearlessness he employed in Durban, though this time his innings lasted long enough to do real damage.

“Probably when he plays his best, isn’t it?” Starc said. “There was pretty slow-going for a while until he came out and probably took a fair amount of that momentum off us.”

Starc was more reserved in his praise of Bavuma, but the fact remained that he was pretty much impassable for 546 minutes, leaving his opposite number Cummins without a wicket from 26 overs.

Whether the Australians might have bowled fewer short balls, many of which sat up obligingly for Bavuma, Jansen and Harmer to pull or hook, is a fair question. “Boring” stump to stump lines with straight fields was the other option available in Lyon’s absence.

“They force you to bring out your A game, to play at your best,” Bavuma said. “There’s still two days left in the game, so I think with whatever momentum, belief, whatever it is that you want to take, we want to carry that through in the next two days, and take all that good work to Cape Town.”

The challenge of the next two days was given vivid illustration by how swiftly Rabada struck, coaxing an edge out of Maddinson in the space of four balls in fading light. After his 4-30 had become 5-81, Boland ended the day as dogged nightwatchman, another blunt encapsulation of how Bavuma had turned this game’s fortunes.

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