Time for Bavuma to let his bat do talking

It has been a week since Proteas white-ball captain Temba Bavuma failed to attract a single bid in the SA20 auction held in Cape Town last Monday. The lack of any takers for his base price of R850,000 split the cricket nation down the middle, with some saying it was criminal and others saying the snub was justified. Cricket SA, in need of a substantial financial injection, hopped into bed with the Indians and created what is essentially a satellite IPL sans Indian players.

CSA say the model, propped up by business-driven Indian partners, SuperSport and other stakeholders, will sustain the development of the game in the country for years to come.

Bavuma is probably not sold (pardon the pun) on CSA’s forecast given recent events, but as the dust begins to temporarily settle around the issue, the national skipper will do well to focus on the job at hand.

The Proteas arrived in India at the weekend for six whiteball matches, split evenly into T20s and ODIs.

The first of those T20s is at the Greenfield International Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday (3.30pm).

Bavuma will be playing his first competitive match since June and the eyes of the cricketing world will be on him as he makes his comeback.

The right-hander has the six white-ball matches in India followed by two T20 World Cup warm-ups against New Zealand (October 17) and Bangladesh (October 19) to get himself firing before the Proteas’ opening game on October 24.

Openly, Bavuma may say that he has no point to prove to anybody, but inwardly he will be wanting to make an emphatic statement.

The 32-year-old will have heard the calls for him to fall on his sword and give up the captaincy of the T20 side and will be desperate to offer his detractors the middle finger.

His four T20 international innings this year have produced scores of 10, 35, eight and eight not out at a cumulative strike-rate of 98.25.

It is his rate of scoring that has come under pressure and he will be the first to admit that he can improve on his effort so far this season.

It is clear that the only way to get the doubters to eat their words will be to let his bat do the talking with match-winning contributions over the next two months.