Bavuma bats into history
IT took 127 years, from 1889 until last Tuesday afternoon in Cape Town, for the first South African black to score a Test century.
What a century it was too by Temba Bavuma, and what a reception! English supporters cheered because they like an under-dog. For kids bussed in from townships such as Langa where Bavuma comes from, it was a moment of triumph.
Solely in cricket terms, Bavuma fast-forwarded the second Test with his hundred off 140 balls and put the pressure back on England, under which they came close to cracking on the final day.
More than that, Bavuma’s achievement says much about SA society past and present. Above all, it is a story of the wasting of lives that results from man’s inhumanity; and it could have been so different if South Africa had not taken 125 years to select a batsman from their black majority in the first place.
Selection on merit” is cricket’s mantra. But who demonstrates more merit if they score the same amount of runs: the boy equipped with everything from birth who went to one of the many schools with excellent cricket facilities? Or Bavuma?
He was born in 1990 in a singlestorey brick house with a communal tap and outside toilet.
Langa is populated by Xhosa people from Eastern Cape. And the tragic waste in South African cricket is that they have been playing the sport keenly ever since British missionaries in the mid-19th century set up schools that preached cricket and rugby, discipline and toughness.
But the selectors of SA’s first national team picked whites only for the first Test against England in Port Elizabeth: 10 of British stock, one Afrikaner. It was not as if any of them was good at batting. In the two-Test series of 1889 no South African reached 30.
Last Thursday evening Langa CC met for their first net-session since Tuesday’s great event. Bavuma s first coach, Ezra Cagwe, pointed out the crossroads where Temba played, from three years old, using a piece of wood and taped tennis ball.
At seven he was playing minicricket, said Cagwe, who watched Bavuma’s hundred at Newlands. At eight he was playing under-10 cricket, then he made Western Province under13. He was always a batsman.”
Bavuma s father was a journalist in Cape Town, but his uncles had played the game. When everyone takes the day-long bus to their ancestral villages in Eastern Cape for the Christmas holidays, they play cricket matches for the prize of a roasted sheep.
One name is even more revered than Bavuma’s at Langa CC: the late John Passmore, the philanthropist who funded their clubhouse. Was he South African? Club officials chorus: No, he was British. No, he was a Langa citizen!”
This club produced the first non-white to keep wicket for SA: Thami Tsolekile.
Batsmen at Langa share the club bats as they cannot afford R1 000. A spectator is John McInroy, who used to play cricket for Langa I was the token white, he says, and everyone falls around laughing.
The five other blacks to play cricket for SA have been fast bowlers: Makhaya Ntini, Monde Zondeki, Mfuneko Ngam and Lonwabo Tsotsobe, all from Eastern Cape, and Kagiso Rabada, the son of a neurosurgeon in Johannesburg. they go to Temba for advice and listen to everything that he says,” Toyana points out. Bavuma this week made history by becoming the first African black player to score a test hundred for South Africa since readmission into the international sports stages 25 years back.
Ironically, 25 years ago Bavuma was born in the streets of Langa, Cape Town, and he would not have imagined the feat of scoring a hundred in the same city he was born in.
At his post-match interview, after scoring his first test hundred against a top English attack, Bavuma gave little away emotionally. He said what he needed to say to Mike Haysman from SuperSport who was keen to know how the little