Ken Borland

It’s been a long and sometimes potholed road for Temba Bavuma, but the Proteas vice-captain will play his 49^th Test in the second match against New Zealand and he says he now feels fully valued and accepted as a leader in the team.

Bavuma made his Test debut way back in 2014, in the Boxing Day match against the West Indies at St George’s Park, which was ruined by rain. Six matches later, his maiden Test century, against England at Newlands, was historic and one of the most memorable moments in South African cricket after the return from isolation.

But as with most of his team-mates, 2019 was an annus horribilis for Bavuma as he only averaged 19.84 in 13 innings. He was dropped and has come back stronger, averaging 46.16 since then.

“I have more peace about how I fit in now, my role in the team,” Bavuma said. “Every game does not feel like my last opportunity now. My role is not just about the runs but my presence, how I contribute to building the culture and environment.

“It has helped me to be more at ease. It’s also helped that I’ve played a fair number of games now and I’ve learnt to accept that there will be good and bad days. If it’s a bad day, then you need to have perspective.

“They don’t define who we are, although we take the lessons from them. Technically, I’ve just tinkered here and there, but I’ve not done much apart from trying to be as still as I can be when the ball is delivered.

“It’s more about the mental processes. But the main thing you want when you come in as a young debutant is to be accepted as part of the team, that’s the main way you perform. And I truly believe that I am accepted and valued in terms of my input, and I think that’s why I have had good performances over the last little while,” Bavuma said.

The 31-year-old Bavuma is a sucker for honest leadership, being that kind of skipper himself with the Proteas white-ball teams or the Central Gauteng Lions. Which is why he has dovetailed so well with Test captain Dean Elgar.

“Dean and I have played alongside each other for quite a while, ever since playing for SA A in 2012/13,” Bavuma said. “The relationship has always been built on honesty, there’s no bullshit with Dean.

“He can be very blunt, he will call you out if you need it, but if you’ve done good then he lets you know as well. His character resonates with me and he wants the same sort of feedback from me.

“As his vice-captain, I try to be a calming voice because he can be quite emotional. But I understand his vision and I back it 100%, and I also back him as a leader and player.

“His success is my success and vice-versa, and we both just want to bring back the respect for the Proteas badge and leave the team in a much better state,” Bavuma said.

Perhaps the biggest change in the Simon Harmer who last played for South Africa in 2015 and the one who is now back in the Test squad in New Zealand is how the off-spinner has become a systematic winner of matches, mostly for Essex but now also for the Northerns Titans in the limited time he has spent with them.

Harmer has collected more first-class wickets than anyone else in the world over the last five years and he has taken 10 wickets in a match seven times in 64 matches for Essex, with 23 five-wicket hauls.

The 32-year-old has already taken 35 wickets in six matches for Northerns, playing key roles in their wins at Newlands (10 wickets) and in Bloemfontein (8 wickets).

“There’s been that perception that off-spinners in general are there to stop the game, go for two runs an over,” Harmer told The Citizen on Tuesday, “but that has shifted to being a wicket-taking option, someone able to win games.

“I have also changed and I now have the realisation that I can win games, I’m able to really influence the outcome. That has been a big change for me over the last few years.

“I’ve relished winning games for Essex and hopefully now even more for the Titans, winning games for them in the second innings in South African conditions.

“At the start of the season, conditions were not conducive to spin so my role was to hold up an end, stop the game, give the team control at one end while the seamers rotate,” Harmer said.

It is very apparent that a major part of Harmer’s development into being one of the world’s best off-spinners has simply been the amount of cricket he has played. The Pretoria-born star has thrived on playing back-to-back seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres. He was a bit more than a budding off-spinner when he signed as a Kolpak player in English county cricket, but he is now certainly in full bloom as a master of his craft.

“Playing back-to-back seasons has really helped me to evolve and develop much quicker,” Harmer said. “And it’s not just the number of games but also the different conditions you experience.

“In England the weather is different, you play with a Dukes ball and there are different pitches. So you learn a lot and you have to do it quickly. You learn about different grips, strategies and which variations work.

“I’ve learnt along the way to sum up what will work very early in a spell and you also need to be able to change things if they are not working, and still be accurate and consistent,” Harmer said.

Keshav Maharaj is almost exactly a year younger than him, having celebrated his 32^nd birthday on Monday, while Harmer turns 33 on Thursday, and their experience and adaptability makes one feel the Proteas have their Test spin-bowling bases well covered.

Eduard Coetzee admits that, during his playing days, he moved to France for nine years because he did not believe, as a White player, that he had a future in South African rugby. Now, as CEO of the Sharks, he is spearheading one of the most ambitious and successful beacons of transformation and inclusive culture in the game.

The former Sharks and SA A prop left Durban in 2005 and played for Bayonnais and Biarritz, before returning to Durban in 2012 and working in the financial sector. He was appointed as the Sharks’ commercial and marketing manager in 2014, chief operations officer in 2015 and became CEO in July 2019.

Coetzee’s business savvy – he has a doctorate in Inclusive Business Model Innovation – and vision certainly played a part in one of the biggest investments ever in South African sport when the MVM consortium became private equity partners of the Sharks.

But the Sharks don’t just have plenty of financial capital; there is also the sense that they have tremendous moral capital in the bank because of the nation-building project that is going so well at Kings Park.

“When we discussed transformation back in the day, all the heads – Black and White – used to drop in the team room,” Coetzee recalls. “It was seen as a punitive thing.

“Whites would feel they had no future in the game and agents played a big hand in that. I was in France for nine years because I believed I had no future here.

“But transformation, in terms of gender, race and mindsets, is a business priority. A lot has changed and ‘I See Colour’ is the cornerstone of our culture. I’m White, you’re Black and that’s cool. We can’t act as if colour doesn’t exist.

“It’s not about apologising for who I am but about being sympathetic to other people. And I had an upbringing that paralleled Steve Hofmeyr’s – Affies, Tuks, the Bulls,” Coetzee points out.

The 42-year-old knows, of course, that on-field success is what the Sharks will ultimately be measured on, however, and even there, ambitions are high.

“We have ambitions of being global competitors. We want to win the Heineken Champions Cup. Previously we were just trying to survive as South African franchises, we would build players up and then lose them.

“But we weren’t an unsuccessful franchise, we were happy enough. But MVM have brought an attitude of we want to try to be the best. They are thinking big.

“We want to invest in people and uplift the community. It’s not about turfing out our history but amplifying it and the global reach of what they believe is an undervalued team,” Coetzee says.

One of the notable gifts of the married father of three sons is the ability to see the potential in others.

“There are guys here who really come from nothing and when you discuss their previous life with them, you realise what that actually means.

“And then you throw them into a situation with lots of money and pressure and no support. That’s where our life coaching and educational development programmes come in.

“I’m still studying and I tell the players that if I have time to do it, then so do you. We have created a structure that gives them enough time to study, with the help of tutors.

“If they do want to go into business, we help them with seed capital through our business development office and our investors draw people of influence into the Sharks environment,” Coetzee points out.

Next time you’re in Durban, pop into the coffee shop at Kings Park, which is run by players, or the local chicken shop which the Sharks have invested in and which has 10 franchises in KZN and five others in Gauteng and the Western Cape.

It is all part of the Sharks’ policy of treating their players unbelievably well … and thereby getting the best out of them on the field and hopefully keeping them in Durban.

Keegan Petersen revealed himself as one of South Africa’s brightest batting talents in the series against India, but the man who made the No.3 position his own has now suffered the disappointment of being ruled out of the tour to New Zealand due to a positive Covid test. This does, however, potentially open the way for an exciting young batsman like Ryan Rickelton to make his long-awaited debut.

Petersen, who is asymptomatic, has been replaced in the squad by Western Province talent Zubayr Hamza.

But Petersen’s misfortune, announced on the morning of the team’s departure for New Zealand, could well be just the break the 25-year-old Rickelton has been waiting for. The Central Gauteng Lions batsman has been part of the Proteas squad since the tour to Pakistan a year ago, but is yet to catch a game.

Rickelton has been in exceptional form in the domestic four-day competition this season, and scores of 90 and a match-saving 102 not out for the Lions against Western Province at Newlands last weekend took his tally this summer to 473 runs in five innings, at an average of 118.25, with three centuries.

But as much as one would like to see a new talent on the international stage, you have to wonder if the Proteas selectors won’t use Petersen’s absence as a lifeline for Aiden Markram.

Markram has scored just 140 runs in his last nine innings, with one half-century, and there was a strong possibility he was going to lose his opening spot in New Zealand to the uncapped Sarel Erwee, who is averaging 86 in four-day cricket this season.

But both Markram and Erwee could conceivably fill Petersen’s No.3 spot. Rickelton is also a top-order batsman, comfortable in the top three, but choosing two uncapped batsmen in Erwee and Rickelton could be too much of a risk for the selectors, so it will be interesting to see which option they choose.