Gaali cricket: Bavuma stands tall, India’s Test ego cut to size

The India-South Africa series-defining fact is the catastrophic decline of Indian red ball cricket where a visiting team can mock us with the 'grovel' word.

Graphic by Shruti Naithani | ThePrint

Given how imaginative and colourful headlines on our Hindi TV news channels tend to be, I am surprised nobody has yet described South Africa’s thrashing of India as “Baune ka Badla” (the revenge of the dwarf). At this point of human evolution, even the use of the somewhat sanitised dwarf is frightfully incorrect. Bauna is the way more offensive Hindi/Punjabi pejorative for a short person.

This is exactly the description our Jasprit Bumrah had for South African captain Temba Bavuma, who towers over a brilliantly improved South African team at all of five feet, four inches. This was in the context of a consultation with wicket-keeper and stand-in captain Rishabh Pant on whether to refer a rejected LBW appeal to DRS or not. Pant said, ‘yeh short bhi toh hai,” (he’s also quite short). Bumrah, sort of in resignation, concurred but used the word ‘bauna” and ended the sentence with the cuss word used across languages to send “compliments” to somebody’s sister: “Yeh bauna bhi toh hai b……..”

Now, ‘gaalis’ have become a big part of competitive cricket and nobody any longer bothers. Women’s cricket has also caught up with men on this. To use ‘bauna’ along with the more familiar ‘b’ word when you know the combination of a stump microphone and social media will leave you no place to hide, in spite of sanitised commentary, was mindless.

Bavuma is a giant of the game. His five-foot-four-inch frame doesn’t define his cricketing stature, just as it didn’t for Sunil Gavaskar, an inch more for Sachin Tendulkar or one less for Gundappa Viswanath. He’s also a Little Master like them, given the South African context. He’s the first black captain in a nation still nursing withering racial divides messing up all its favourite sports, from rugby to cricket.

Bavuma responded by standing tall on a minefield in South Africa’s second innings in the first Test to score 55, the highest for either side in that Test. It set up his team’s victory.

This was followed by the giant walloping and humiliation of India, by the highest margin (408 runs) at home to sweep the series 2-0. The ‘bauna,’ if so, had had his revenge, or badla.

As SA wrapped up the first Test in merely its eighth session, we saw Bumrah walk with his arm around Bavuma and speaking warmly. If you could read faces, there was a word of congratulation, and likely, contrition. The South Africans, however, had been awakened. Guwahati was their calm payback. Until the end of the fourth day, when asked why he had made India field for so long rather than declare earlier, SA coach Shukri Conrad said that “we wanted to make them grovel.” Chances are that he knew the context. He was teaching India cricketing manners in their own kind of language. Low blow for low blow.

The “grovel” context goes back to 1976, when the West Indies arrived in England and host captain Tony Greig, boasted pre-series that he intended to “make them (the West Indies) grovel.” Nobody missed the racism, even more so as Greig was South African-born and this was the peak of the apartheid era. It angered and united the West Indies to hand England a 3-0 blackwash at home. It helped that this was one of those all-time great WI teams with Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge, Viv Richards, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Vanburn Holder and more.

At the Guwahati post-match presser, Bavuma was asked about the “grovel” comment. He said the coach was nearly 60 and will think about his words. He also said, “but in this series, certain (Indian) guys have also crossed the line.”

Bavuma is no stranger to being mocked. Internet quickly pulled out a 2023 quote from him. He said then: “I’ve been called a lot of names in my life. Some names hurt…. but the name I’ve been called most in my life is Temba. My grandmother named me Temba because it means hope. Hope for our community. Hope for our country.”

These words, however, do not define the series. The two cricketing nations have had an incredibly good relationship, and you will soon see many South Africans prospering in the coming season of IPL, as they have done since it started in 2008. For years, A.B. de Villiers has been the darling of Indian crowds. I was at Delhi’s Ferozeshah Kotla when India defeated SA in the fourth Test in the 2015 series. The biggest cheer from the crowd came not for any of the Indian stars but for “ABD.” The teams and cricket boards will ensure the relations remain calm and mutually beneficial. What defines the series then?

The series defining fact is the catastrophic decline of Indian red ball cricket where a visiting team had a complete series sweep. Indian Gen-Z and even the millennials have no recollection of Indian Test cricket being in ‘grovelling’ dumps. In 88 home Tests between 2008 and 2025 India won a stupendous 59. This took India to World Test Championship final twice and kept it at the top of the Test rankings for long in the Shastri-Dravid era.

In these 17 years India lost just 10 Tests at home, half of these in the last two home series against New Zealand and SA. The home-spun advantage that made India unbeatable is suddenly a grave liability. The paradox: as the brilliantly drawn England series, and the hard-fought if lost series in Australia showed, this India plays better abroad than at home.

Two things have gone wrong. One, this Indian team can neither bowl spin nor bat against it. Second, the change of team management puts all-purpose cricketers above specialists. Since 2001, India’s formula at home has been simple. Five specialist batters, an attacking wicket-keeper, two pacers and three specialist spinners. It was a bonus if a couple could also bat usefully at home, particularly when the rival attacks tired.

In the course of time, age and fatigue took their toll on the older spinners. Then the indescribably stupid idea of playing Washington Sundar as batting off-spinner who bowled just one over on a two-day Eden Gardens pitch and 48 in Guwahati for one wicket. To add to the absurdity, he was played at number three, in the spot owned by Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara and Rahul Dravid most recently and then relegated to number eight at Guwahati.

Nitish Reddy was played as a batting all-rounder too, and bowled all of ten overs in the two innings in Guwahati while scoring exactly the same number of runs: 10. Obviously his bowling is so poor he gave poor Bumrah a break.

This is bull-headed. Indian selectors, led by the ever-so-smug Ajit Agarkar should have been watching domestic cricket for some spin talent. I am sure Ranji would have a half dozen who can bowl better than Sundar or Jadeja today. The batters should’ve been forced to play domestic cricket and trained to play spin. SA came well-prepared after a tough, drawn series in Pakistan.

The larger problem is, the BCCI has taken its eye off the red ball. The fan is its customer and Test cricket the purest, the most valuable form of the game. Check out the viewership figures for the England and Australia series. It has to forget cricketing and party politics and go back to horses for courses. If you have different captains for different forms of the game, you can find different coaches too.

Gambhir comes from the new age of Indian cricket, the most aggressive form of which is found in his West Delhi, also Virat Kohli’s karmabhumi. This is the ‘kya ukhad lega’ (untranslatable but: let’s see what’ve you got) school of cricket. For now, he’s only managed to ‘ukhado’ (uproot) the stumps of Indian Test cricket. He must go, along with the selection committee. They started on a grand campaign to destroy the star system they detested. India’s red ball domination has become a collateral damage. Do they care? It doesn’t matter. They must be held accountable now. This WTC cycle ends with Australia coming here for five Tests. Unless of course the BCCI is okay seeing being made to grovel at home become a habit.