For almost three decades, every South African campaign at an ICC event ended in emotional agony. In 1992, as the Proteas emerged from the darkness of apartheid and got into the topflight of cricket, they had England against the ropes in the World Cup semi-final with 22 runs to win off 13 balls. Then it rained. Using a bizarre methodology that no one understood then or now, South Africa were left to score an impossible 21 runs off one ball. In 1999, the team was within striking distance of victory. This time, their opponents were Australia. Needing nine runs off the final over, Lance Klusener smashed two fours to tie the match.
Then Allan Donald, in a brain fade moment, ran himself out. South Africa lost on net run rate. Then, it got worse. In 2003, Mark Boucher celebrated victory too early, having miscalculated the target by a solitary run in a rain-affected league match against Sri Lanka, knocking his team out of their home World Cup. This haunted them for decades.
In 2022, I asked Paddy Upton, former mental conditioning coach of both the Indian and South African cricket teams at different times, why South Africa faltered so often at the final hurdle. His answer: “Australia win because they go into contests believing they will win. South Africa loses, because at the back of their mind they are afraid they will lose. It’s all in the mind. And some day, that will change.” Then, at Lord’s in the summer of 2025, it did. Against all odds, South Africa beat Australia by five wickets to win the 2023–25 World Test Championship.
Over the past 18 months, quietly, unobtrusively, the Proteas have gone about the task of shedding the ‘chokers’ tag. And if their rise through the Test rankings to conquer Australia at Lord’s and lift the Mace seemed like a fairy tale, their 2-0 decimation of India in India was nothing short of a Roman triumph. And leading from the front, at each inch of the way has been a captain who has had to bat not just against the best pacers and spinners the world could throw at him, but against prejudice in his own nation and in others.
Conquering India, changing the narrative
If the WTC Mace ended a drought, the 2–0 win in India has re-drawn the cricketing map. India have long been the game’s final frontier — a fortress of spinning pitches, depth in batting, and an aura built on years of dominance at home. For South Africa to arrive as newly crowned world champions and then hand India their biggest ever Test defeat — a 408-run humiliation in Guwahati — was to take the old script, shred it, and set it on fire.
Until November 2025, no South African captain had won a Test series in India for 25 years. Temba Bavuma now stands alongside Hansie Cronje in that short list. For good measure, and in a sign of how good South Africa have been over the past year and more, Bavuma has an unbeaten record after 12 Tests as captain.
The win against India that left its debutant captain and millions of fans shedding tears of frustration was not a one-off ambush. Shadow tours, meticulous planning, and a clearly articulated leadership group signalled months in advance that South Africa were coming for this series and would leave “no stone unturned” to break India’s hold at home. Indian cricket, led by a head coach who wears arrogance on his sleeve, laughed in derision at the prospect.
Bavuma: A small man carrying a giant load
In the backdrop of what happened, the ‘bauna‘ (dwarf) jibes in parts of the Indian discourse, mocking Bavuma for his height, turned out to be not a harmless banter, but a mirror held up to our own smallness. Here was a Black African captain carrying the weight of an entire nation’s complicated history, steering a team to a world title and a series win in India, and yet being reduced to a caricature by those who should have known better.
While Shukri Conrad, the South African Head Coach, courted unnecessary controversy with his ill-advised “we wanted to make them (India) grovel” comment, an unfortunate use of a term that has deep roots in racism, Bavuma’s response has been typical of his batting — compact, controlled, letting the nastiest deliveries go through to the keeper while quietly piling up wins. He chose to respond to jibes not in press conferences but on the field as a captain — at Lord’s with a pressure-soaking 50, and with an unbeaten 55 on a Kolkata minefield, followed by a crushing series victory at Guwahati. In doing so, the ‘bauna’ stood tall, leaving the self-appointed giants of world cricket on their knees.
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Quotas, pipelines, and proof on the field
For decades, South African cricket’s quota system was held up, particularly in India and Australia, as Exhibit A in the case against ‘politics in sport’. Every dropped catch or lean run by a player of colour was lazily attributed to ‘transformation’ rather than the randomness of form that every cricketer lives with. At the same time, White under-performers were granted the quiet dignity of being judged as sportspersons having a bad day.
This South African side is now holding a mirror to the world. It is led by a Black African captain, powered by a diverse group of players who grew up in the era of formal transformation targets, and has just won the WTC and a series in India while sitting atop the Test rankings. The positive evolution of the process has made quotas at the senior level irrelevant in terms of the playing XI. But that was always the point. The controversial, imperfect policies of the 1990s and 2000s have, over time, built a pipeline strong enough to make representation feel natural rather than forced.
If anything, this team is the lived rebuttal to the lazy narrative that ‘merit’ and ‘affirmative action’ are opposites. The fast-bowling spearhead is Black. The captain is Black. The Head Coach is of mixed race. Key batters and allrounders come from communities that apartheid kept outside the game for generations. And yet, no one watching the decisive victories at Lord’s and in Guwahati, over the two best sides of the past decade and more, could say that this side is on the field for any reason other than performance. The transformation debate will never be simple in South Africa, but in 2025, the scoreboard and the rankings are making a powerful case of their own.
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Winning big, thinking small
What makes this success even more remarkable is that it has come at a time when South African cricket is financially stretched. Its domestic structures are under pressure and player drain to franchise leagues is a persistent risk. This is not a board awash with broadcast cash or a system where two Test squads can be rotated without blinking. In fact, in the previous WTC cycle, South Africa was effectively forced to field a weak third XI in a Test series against New Zealand and they effectively conceded the two Test series, so that the T20 league could generate the cash for cricket to survive in the country. And yet, through smart prioritisation and clear communication, Bavuma and Conrad have moulded a tight first-choice group that knows exactly what it is trying to be in Test cricket.
There is a lesson here for richer boards, including India. Money can buy depth, facilities, and analysis, but it cannot purchase clarity of purpose. South Africa arrived in India as WTC champions with a plan tailored to local conditions. It had a bowling attack drilled to exploit any hint of assistance, even as it involved bringing back a 35-year-old off-spinner, Steve Harmer, who had given up his right to play for South Africa by becoming a Kolpack player. He would, against all odds, become the man of the series. It had batters who had prepared mentally for low-scoring street-fights rather than flat-track feasts. The result was not an upset, but the logical outcome of a team thinking hard and playing harder.
In Temba Bavuma’s South Africa, cricket has given us something rare. We have before us a team that has carried the burdens of history, prejudice, and financial constraint, and has still found a way to be the best in the world. As Indian cricket grapples with the humiliation of a fast descent on the rankings table and derision from a cricketing world rejoicing in bringing us down a few notches from our arrogant perch, it is perhaps time to take a leaf out of the South African playbook. Replace ego with humility, swap out T20 experts with red-ball exponents from domestic cricket, re-learn trench fighting when the going gets tough, take pride in wearing the India cap, and appoint a coach who takes ownership equally both for his team’s successes and failures.
Anindya Dutta is a sports columnist and author of ‘Wizards: The Story of Indian Spin Bowling’ and ‘Advantage India: The Story of Indian Tennis’. He tweets @Cric_Writer. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)