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Even when he walked off at the end of the day’s play, he knew it was not the time to celebrate. He knew that he and Temba Bavuma still had a long way to go.
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In years to come, films will be made about the Proteas’ victory against Australia in the World Test Championship final played at Lord’s, the home of cricket, last week (11-14 June 2025). Much of the cricketing world no doubt felt that South Africa did not deserve to be in the final. So many, like former English captain Michael Vaughan, and especially those from England and Australia, said we don’t belong in this competition, that we didn’t play the best teams. Yet they were the very ones who kept the top tier games among England, Australia and India and shut the door on South African cricket. But even at home, there were more naysayers who wrote this Proteas side off as a bunch of no-hopers. The likes of Quinton de Kock and Heinrich Klaasen had long abandoned the red ball format in search of IPL riches. Why, at the start of their eight-match winning stretch, the Proteas had to field a bunch of fringe players no one had heard of in years.
And so, it was a classic David versus Goliath tale. But as Boyzone so eloquently remind us in their song “No matter what”: “No matter where it’s barren/ A dream is being born”.
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Aiden Markram, Temba Bavuma, KG Rabada, Lungi Ngidi and our team of no-hopers have given us more than just silverware and the title of World Champions.
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And so, in the dry white season of South African cricket, new names began to emerge – Ryan Rickleton, Tony de Zorzi, David Bedingham, Wiaan Mulder, Kyle Verreynne and long-in-the-tooth bowlers like Dane Patterson. But were they good enough? That was the nagging question. Could this motley crew compete against a rampant England, or the unstoppable Indian team, let alone those perennial thorns in our side, Australia.
On the eve of the final, I phoned one of my good friends, Ashwin Desai, a student of the five-day game. “You still have hope?” he barked at me. Yes, I said in defiance, all we need is one hundred or for Rabada to blow the Aussies out of the park.
And so it proved to be on the first day. KG single-handedly disembowelled the Australian top order. Aiden smuggled the wicket of top scorer Steve Smith, when he seemed to be wrestling the initiative away from the South Africans. Only Beau Webster stood tall at the crease, literally and figuratively, with wicket keeper Carey walking past a Keshav Maharaj ball, and the talismanic Travis Head gloving a soft dismissal to Verreynne. Before tea on the first day, the mighty Australians were back in the changeroom for a paltry 212, and Rabada had claimed another five-wicket haul. He had also surpassed Alan Donald’s record of 330 wickets.
Having watched enough five-day cricket in my life, I expected our openers to battle against the new ball. But I was sure 300 runs were possible. And then, as has become customary, Aiden Markram, a man who promised so much, failed us yet again. Out for a duck. Before I knew what had hit us, those annoying Australian bowlers Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazelwood were running circles around our batsmen like a posse of Tasmanian Devils. We closed day one at 30/4. I mean, poor KG must have just come out of a hot shower to find Markram, Rickleton, Stubbs and Mulder back in the changeroom.
The next morning started better, with Captain Courageous Temba Bavuma looking in sublime form. But just when I had a sniff of 300 runs, he was out and we were 94/5. Literally 40 runs later, we were bowled out for 138. That lower middle order fell faster than the fortunes of the ANC, with David Bedingham top-scoring with 45.
By now, Ashwin was texting me, “Do you still believe?” For only minutes earlier, I had been texting him about how we would get to 300 when Bavuma was at the crease, and now we were all out. These Proteas are useless, I thought to myself. How had we fallen from the likes of Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla to this? True, the World Cup eluded those greats, but they are all inductees of the Wisden Hall of Fame. Their names roll off the lips with all the other greats of the game.
And so I decided to take the dogs for a drive. Just as well. Because half an hour later, on a station inappropriately called Smile FM, I heard those bloody Aussies were 28/0. They were thus 100-odd ahead of us, with ten wickets in hand and three and a half days to bat.
When I got home, I decided to switch on the telly. Even though it’s not good for my heart. And boy was I glad I did, because that man KG Rabada picked up two wickets in an over, just like he did in the first innings (28/2).
And then the hand of God. In the build-up to the test, everyone had been moaning about Lungi Ngidi. How could it be that a man who was out injured for virtually all of 2024, could be leap-frogged into the side above Dane Patterson? Must be a quota selection, we all said. I admit I thought the same, especially after a lacklustre eight-over spell in the first innings where he looked out of his depth.
But in the space of a few overs, the Hilton College old boy rolled back the glory years and knocked the daylight out of the Aussies, removing the first innings top scorers Steve Smith and Beau Webster. At 78/7, I had visions of that mace being in the palm of Temba Bavuma’s hands by the close of the third day.
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That Protea fire was back in my belly like a Durban bunny chow.
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That Protea fire was back in my belly like a Durban bunny chow. I went to bed dreaming of humiliating those mighty Australians within three days. But I should have known better. The 78/7 went on to become a frustrating 207/9, with no one able to dismiss Mitchell Starc. Until Aiden Markram, against the run of play, induced a lone false stroke from Starc.
But in the collective psyche of South Africa, we knew it was too little, too late. Chasing over 280 runs in the fourth innings to win, had been achieved by only one other side in the history of cricket at Lord’s, going back over a century. We tried to console ourselves that the wicket was playing easier, but we all knew that our batsmen were as reliable as Eskom. That Markram might get a royal pair. That Bavuma would score 30-odd and get out. And that our tail was as effective as a donkey’s tail trying to swat off flies from its backside.
True to form, Rickleton went early. This from a man who scored over 200 runs against Pakistan just six months ago. Again, I heard the collective murmur of a country that has experienced such heartache for the last 27 years, since that black day when Lance Klusener played the greatest innings I had seen up till that point, only for Alan Donald to be run out when victory seemed to be a walk in the park.
But then the pendulum began to shift. Wiaan Mulder played a sublime innings, giving us a hint of why his coach thinks he is worthy of the number three spot. He departed at 70/2.
With our two best – and at times our most unreliable – batsmen, Temba Bavuma and Aiden Markram, at the crease, there was a flicker of hope.
How were we to know at 70/2, that what we would witness would be not only the highest third-wicket partnership for South Africa at Lord’s, but probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, hundred by Aiden Kyle Markram, who, unsurprisingly for a man of such good looks, has proven to be more of a serial heartbreaker than the trustworthy and dependable partner that South African cricket followers so craved. Former English cricketer turned commentator Mark Nicholas summed up a nation’s perception about Aiden Markram so eloquently: “He started, he stuttered. He started, he stuttered.”
But Friday, 13 June 2025, proved to be Markram’s lucky day. In the space of just two sessions, he stroked and caressed his way to a flawless hundred.
Nasser Hussein, former England captain and commentator, called Markram’s innings “one of the all-time clutch hundreds”. For those not familiar with the phrase, it refers to the greatest sporting achievements achieved under the most trying circumstances and immense pressure. Kiwi commentator Ian Smith, who was condescending toward South Africa throughout his commentary, said: “South Africa have waited years for a day like today.” It must rank as the understatement of the day. We have waited 27 years, if not longer, for this day. I was not even a father on that ill-fated day at Edgbaston when we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory of Steve Waugh’s Australians.
And when I saw Markram’s wife break down and cry at the sight of her husband reaching the magical three figures, I cried with her. Honestly, I did. Because I understood the tormented genius of Aiden Markram.
His was not the story of Graeme Smith, Hashim, AB or Jacques Kallis. His was a story of unfulfilled promise. Over what felt like an entire career to his supporters.
A man who they said was destined to be captain. A man destined for greatness.
And yet, like so many South African greats before him, he failed on the world’s greatest cricketing stage so often that even I said after the last World Cup it was time to drop him and the entire Protea 50-over side.
But with his sublime hundred on 13 June 2025, his third in the fourth innings of test matches, Markram is now behind only Graeme Smith, who has four hundreds in fourth innings performances. And the fourth innings is the yardstick to judge the greatness of players.
And did you notice his reaction when he got to 100? There were none of the fist pumps, jumping in the air, kissing the wicket. For he knew his job was not done. How many times since Lance Klusener have we seen South African cricket come to the very brink of glory, only to break the cricketing hearts of a nation, a nation brought up on a steady diet of disappointment, despair and disillusionment?
Aiden Markram (Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, via WikiMedia)
Even when he walked off at the end of the day’s play, he knew it was not the time to celebrate. He knew that he and Temba Bavuma still had a long way to go. If the Proteas of 1999 could lose when all Lance Klusener needed was a single run, he must have known their task was 69 times more difficult. He must have surmised there would be time enough for celebrations the next day, when the winning runs were scored – and if he was still at the crease.
He and Bavuma knew they could not depend on the young Turks Stubbs, Bedingham and Verreynne to get 69 runs. Not against an Australian side who hunt in a pack and finish off their prey at the whiff of blood, or the mere scent of fear and panic among their opponents. A team that you would bet to win 90% of the time if Markram or Bavuma were to get out in the morning with 69 runs still needed.
Even worse for my tortured soul was the realisation that 69 had been the number on Lance Klusener’s jersey. And now, in search of those 69 runs, I was wrought with angst. In the first 45 minutes, we scored a mere 15 runs and lost Captain Courageous Temba Bavuma.
After one hour and 20 minutes, we still needed 40 runs, which meant that in 80 minutes we had only mustered 29 runs. And we lost another wicket.
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It is against this context that one must understand and rejoice at Markram’s eighth century at the home of cricket on Friday, 13 June 2025. For we are a cricketing nation who have had to find succour from a steady diet of disappointment, heartbreak and dare I say trauma. An unsightly keloid tissue or scar tissue the length of a cricket pitch runs through the psyche of our nation. Almost 15 semi-final losses and four losses in finals. Understood in these terms, when a cricketing nation loses all hope, it is against this backdrop that this victory must be understood.
Aiden Markram, Temba Bavuma, KG Rabada, Lungi Ngidi and our team of no-hopers have given us more than just silverware and the title of World Champions. They have given an entire nation hope. The audacity of hope that we might well be able to lift the World Cup in the 50-over format on home soil in 2027. For in the words of Al Pacino: “There is no prosthesis for an amputated soul.”
And as a nation, there was no prosthesis for the amputated soul of South African cricket before that majestic hundred by Aiden Markram. And that unforgettable partnership with a hobbled Temba Bavuma that will forever live in the palaces of our memory for every South African cricket lover.
Kevin Petersen called Markram’s hundred one of South Africa’s finest innings. Matthew Hayden called it a pearler of a hundred. One of the funnier quotes came from Shahin Mohun on Facebook: “On sandpaper, Australia is the better team.”
On a more profound note, Facebooker Ali Hassan wrote: “The best thing about test cricket is that it always gives you a second chance.”
This is the lesson of Lungi Ngidi and Aiden Markram: life always gives you a second chance and the belief that there are always better days before us, no matter your past.
Kommentaar
Beautifully written with so much truth ❤️