Johannesburg – Temba Bavuma, a T20 innings – take two.
The South African captain will step out onto the Allan Border Field in Brisbane on Wednesday seeking form, confidence and a way to ease the pressure on himself and the national selectors ahead of the T20 World Cup. The Proteas play their first match in the tournament on Monday, against as yet undecided opponents.
For Bavuma, Wednesday’s match against Bangladesh is the final opportunity to arrest chatter about his place in the starting side. A total of 11 runs in four innings in India, including two ducks, has put the 32-year-old firmly in the spotlight.
As captain, Bavuma will be given extra leeway to find his feet. However with Reeza Hendricks and Rilee Rossouw in better form and able to provide the necessary aggression at the top of the order, Bavuma will know that another failure on Wednesday will increase the volume about omitting him for next Monday’s match.
It would still make it a brave decision by Victor Mpitsang and his selection panel – which includes the outgoing coach Mark Boucher – if they did leave Bavuma on the bench, but with just five group matches to ensure qualification for the semi-finals, there is very little room to manoeuvre.
The team has publicly backed Bavuma; with Boucher saying he would be treated with the respect a captain deserves, while on Monday, following the warm-up match with New Zealand, Keshav Maharaj said Bavuma was “building up nicely,” towards the tournament. Bavuma missed that clash to give him extra time to recover from the illness that saw him miss the last two One-Day Internationals in India.
Now however, there is no place left to hide for the South African skipper.
The Proteas’ problems seem minuscule when compared to Bangladesh. It’s hard to believe that the Tigers went into last year’s tournament with genuine hopes of a semi-final spot after beating New Zealand and Australia on home soil. However those triumphs were achieved on dreadful surfaces in Mirpur. The confidence Bangladesh gained from those wins was actually an illusion and they lost all of their Super 12 clashes in the UAE.
This time around they are in terrible shape heading into the tournament. They’ve won just four out of 16 T20 Internationals this year, sidelined Russell Domingo from coaching the T20 team and recently they lost all four matches in a tri-series tournament in New Zealand that involved Pakistan and the Black Caps.
Some are viewing that as not being a bad thing, because at least the Bangladeshi players have been exposed to similar conditions to what they will face in the World Cup and they came up against strong opponents. However they then were smashed by Afghanistan in a warm-up match on Monday, scoring just 98/9 in reply to Afghanistan’s 160/7.
Wednesday’s match starts at 10am.
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