On Tuesday night, Livingstone hit the longest six of IPL 2022 so far, of 117 metres

Nagraj Gollapudi04-May-2022Punjab Kings’ captain Mayank Agarwal couldn’t believe what he had just seen. His expression, eyes popping, was not very different from that of most others at DY Patil Stadium on Tuesday evening when Liam Livingstone tonked the longest six of IPL 2022 so far: a 117-metre monster.It was a 134.7kph length delivery from Mohammed Shami, and Livingstone sent it sailing so high into the night sky that it seemed like the ball had gone over the stadium roof behind the deep square-leg boundary.Livingstone wore a “what the …” expression after the hit, which changed to a laugh almost immediately. Shami went from a wry smile to a chuckle as he walked back to his mark.Graeme Smith, on air, called it a “monster”, “one of the biggest” he had ever seen. Talking on ESPNcricnfo’s T20 Time Out afterwards, Aakash Chopra said the hit should be awarded eight runs.

You know what a block shot is?
No, absolutely not! I told you this all along: there is no time for blocks in T20 cricket.The Rabada-Livingstone exchange

Livingstone hits sixes for a living; fans and bowlers talk about them for long afterwards. That is why Kings bought the England allrounder for INR 11.5 crore (US$ 1.533 million approx.) at the February auction, their most expensive buy this time. Livingstone has shown why he is worthy of the price: apart from being among the top-ten scorers this IPL [till May 3], he is only behind Shikhar Dhawan in the run tally for Kings, going at an average of over 32 and a strike rate of 186.62.The strike rate of 300 in his unbeaten ten-ball 30 against Titans was the fifth-highest so far this season for an innings of 25 runs or more. Livingstone has 23 sixes so far in the tournament, only behind Jos Buttler’s 36. He has also hit 21 fours, giving him a boundary every 3.6 balls – that is the highest for any batter with a cut-off of 150 balls faced.Livingstone is so ruthless that he has no mercy for bowlers even in training. As Kagiso Rabada, team-mate at Kings, revealed in a short but entertaining chat with Livingstone on iplt20.com after the win against Titans. Rabada himself has suffered at Livingstone’s hands, being smashed for three consecutive sixes at the T20 World Cup 2021 in Sharjah. The first of those, measured at 112 metres, was the longest six of the World Cup.Rabada: Talk us through that six.
Livingstone: Yeah, it’s nice to get one off the middle actually. I think it might have been as big as the one that I hit you for in Sharjah.Rabada: Yeah, but I also got him out. [Dwaine Pretorius actually got Livingstone’s wicket on that occasion.]
Livingstone: But, no, it was nice. It’s been a while since I got one properly out of the scooter.Rabada: You know what a block shot is?
Livingstone: No, absolutely not! I told you this all along: there is no time for blocks in T20 cricket.Rabada: There we go. I’ve seen it in the nets. First two balls he faces, he tries to smash them. Other day in the nets, I don’t know who was bowling to him, he faces the first two balls, (and) he says: “that’s ten off two”.

With the increase in T20 leagues, the next couple of years will show whether BBL can work in the rapidly changing landscape

Andrew McGlashan21-Aug-20220:30

Warner on BBL return: ‘Important for me to give back to future of our game’

Cricket Australia had no choice. They had to get the chequebook out to bring David Warner back to the BBL.Even though as a CA centrally contracted player it’s difficult to see how he ever could have gone to the UAE’s ILT20, the mere link of him to the new league was enough to set alarm bells ringing.With the increase in T20 competitions, particularly in that January window, what is becoming clear – if it wasn’t before – is that with a demand for top overseas players having your domestic stars available is vital.Related

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And that is also why the Warner deal, which will allow him five games before the finals, while important and significant, is also only one part of a much bigger challenge for the BBL.The tournament has a big pre-season week coming up. On Monday the full list of names for the overseas draft next Sunday will be confirmed along with the players allocated to the platinum category whose salary, like Warner’s, will be topped up by CA.However, while splashing the cash at overseas names, CA will also need to look at its own players. Warner’s big-money deal has hastened discussions about what the leading Australia names earn in the league with the top figure, which the likes of Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis and Adam Zampa will hold, currently around the AU$200,000 mark for a 14-game regular season. That is all but sure to change when the next MoU is agreed.After being held back by two years due to Covid-19, the introduction of the draft has been a key part of the attempts to revive the BBL which has suffered an identity crisis pretty much from the moment it expanded from its original, leaner size when the dollar signs could not be resisted.While it would be overstating things to suggest that BBL talk has dominated the airwaves in recent weeks, there has certainly been more of a narrative around the competition than was previously the case in July and August (not all of it is positive, but all publicity, right?).The bottom line, however, will be how the tournament fares on the field in December and January after two seasons of battling border closures, bubbles and crowd restrictions of the pandemic. While Covid brought some unprecedented challenges – and keeping the tournament afloat was a herculean challenge (whether it went too far can be debated) – the warning signs were there beforehand.The central debate around the BBL will always be its length, which this season is running close to eight weeks with the final in early February. Outside of the IPL, which has its dedicated window that is only getting bigger, it is the longest domestic T20 tournament of its type. And, for the leading players, the money still doesn’t match what’s on offer in the UAE or South Africa for a shorter competition.Whether a step back can be taken when the new broadcast deal is put together (a less is more approach) remains to be seen, but this season will be a test case of whether the current length remains viable. Or a lot more money needs to be found. It is expected that the majority of the platinum overseas players in the draft will only be available until the end of December before dispersing for the new tournaments. Replacements can be signed but won’t be the A-listers, although that does not mean they won’t be good players.Marnus Labuschagne recently inked in BBL deal for post-Test stint•Getty ImagesIn theory, Australia’s Test players will be able to step into the breach after the final match against South Africa in Sydney now that the ODI series has been cancelled as CSA puts its new domestic league first. Warner, along with Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne, are now inked in but there may not be many more.Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins will be resting while the reported that Steven Smith is undecided ahead of the four-Test tour to India. However, in many ways the player who now most sums up the ongoing dilemma the BBL has is Josh Hazlewood. He is the No. 1 men’s T20I bowler in the world and may not line up in Australia’s own domestic tournament depending on his workload.In the recently confirmed men’s FTP, CA has done what it can to try and forge a small mid-January window for the BBL. Their white-ball-only players will be free which is crucial, but Test demands will overlap in most seasons. In the 2023-24 summer, for example, which could potentially prove the swansong to Warner’s international career, there are set to be Tests against West Indies in January (pushed later by the whole season being constrained by the ODI World Cup). In 2024-25 there are two Tests in Sri Lanka and in January 2026-27 there is a Test tour to India.That is not to say these are the wrong decisions, there is a wider debate about what the BBL wants to be. It is a relief in many ways that in Australia Test cricket remains such an important feature, but it means the major issues keep circling back on themselves. In terms of Australia’s home season, there continues to be the desire to cram the majority of the major men’s cricket into basically a two-month window in December and January outside of World Cup years such as this one. Making the most of the school holidays is an understandable aim, but it leaves very little room for manoeuvre.Talk to people at CA and they will say that the BBL and international career has always coexisted and can continue to do so, but the way the game is moving they are increasingly becoming an outlier in that regard. The next couple of years will show whether it can work in the rapidly changing landscape.

Two elbow surgeries and a frustrating year later, the England fast bowler is finding his stride, and pace, again in time for the T20 World Cup

Matt Roller19-Oct-2022Mark Wood is lying in a hospital bed, still under anaesthesia after undergoing elbow surgery. “Is my shoulder meant to be sore?” he asks in a video filmed by England physio Ben Langley. “That’s weird, that. I’ve had elbow surgery but my shoulder’s aching. Whatever. I’ll still bowl fast. F***ing hit ’em in the head.”Seven months later he is in Australia doing just that. Wood has only bowled 12 overs in T20 internationals since his return to fitness but in that time has re-established himself as one of England’s key players, taking three wickets in three consecutive games and hitting a top speed of 156kph in Karachi last month.Related

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It has been a frustrating 2022 for him. He felt discomfort in his elbow during the Ashes last winter and it flared up on the tour of the West Indies, prompting surgery to remove bone and scar tissue. His first attempt at a comeback was unsuccessful and he went under the knife again at the end of July so that a ligament, which had been getting trapped in the joint, could be cut off.”I changed my run-up three years ago and since then, things have been going really well,” Wood says. “I’ve played a lot of games, found some form and done okay, I think, for England. So this was a setback. I had the first surgery but I could sense that it just wasn’t getting there. This time, it’s been sorted straightaway.”He is returning to Australia with his stock at an all-time high. Wood was England’s standout bowler and leading wicket-taker in the Ashes last winter and was one of the few players to enhance his reputation during a gruelling 4-0 series defeat. “It’s great to be going off the back of feeling like I bowled well there last time,” he says. “You want to give a good account of yourself in Australia. It’s the fiercest atmosphere you can be in as an Englishman.”Since returning to fitness, Wood has picked up nine wickets in three T20Is, at a strike rate of 8.0•Albert Perez/ICC/Getty ImagesHis performances earned him praise from several greats of the game working in the media. “I would be texting one of my best pals back home, like, ‘Brett Lee just came up to me’ or ‘Ricky Ponting just spoke to me.’ We used to write their names down in a book as kids and pretend to be them in the back garden. It’s amazing, really, to think that, one, they know your name, and two, they respect you as a cricketer.”This time, Wood will have his family in Australia and has plans to visit Palm Beach Currumbin CC on the Gold Coast, where he spent three seasons playing club cricket. “I’m hoping they can meet my son, Harry,” he says. “At the minute, all he’s into is tarantulas. He must have mentioned going to Australia to see the snakes and the tarantulas about 150 times. The zoo could be on the cards, on a down day.”Wood has quickly become one of the first names on England’s T20 team sheet, despite a spasmodic short-form career to date. He has only played 44 T20s, more than half of them for England. His World Cup team-mates have toured the world playing for different franchises but he has only played one game in an overseas league, for Chennai Super Kings in the IPL in 2018.But Wood possesses something no other England bowler has, with the exception of the injured Jofra Archer: genuine pace. Matthew Mott, England’s coach, calls him an “X-factor bowler”, and Jos Buttler has made it clear to him that he has been picked to take wickets. He has taken one every 14.3 balls across his T20I career, the best strike rate of any England bowler in the format.Since returning to fitness, he has hardly bowled a slower ball, instead trying to “whack the wicket as hard as I could”. Buttler has used him in every phase of the game and will continue to give him short bursts throughout the innings during the World Cup – most notably as a middle-overs enforcer.

England cut loose against an ill-balanced attack, on another benign Pindi surface

Danyal Rasool01-Dec-2022Just over 24 hours ago, England put out their starting eleven for the first Test, to general amusement from just about everyone who follows red-ball cricket in Pakistan. The idea of a bowling attack comprising Ollie Robinson, Jack Leach, a 40-year old James Anderson, and Ben Stokes as the fourth seamer was deemed so light as to be tactically naïve.Liam Livingstone at eight? Harry Brook in the Test squad? What were England playing at, thinking they could play Bazball in Pakistan?Across 75 surreal overs in Rawalpindi on Thursday, England went about answering those questions. By the time the early-setting December sun put Pakistan out of their misery, England had racked up a first-day world-record 506 for 4, effectively putting the game out of their opponents’ reach in a little over two sessions.England in this kind of mood, on a pitch that gives them so little to fear, may feel like they’re unstoppable, but an hour out from the toss, Pakistan did something that had seemed impossible a day earlier – They outdid England in the mirth-inducing team selection face-off.The legspin decision Yasir Shah had been dropped after an indifferent run and Pakistan were in need of a legspinner. In the squad they had named, they had two to choose from: Abrar Ahmed and Zahid Mahmood. You know how selectors sometimes find themselves needing to make invidious decisions with little to separate two players? This really didn’t seem like one of them.For starters, Abrar and Zahid played for the same side, Sindh, in the recently concluded Quaid-e-Azam trophy season. Abrar was the leading wicket-taker in the competition, taking 43 wickets in seven matches at 21.95. Zahid, by contrast, managed 13 in five, each wicket costing 45.76 runs.When both spinners were available to Sindh and they wished to play just one, it was Zahid who dropped to the bench. And for those who like a spinner to be able to keep a lid on the runs? Well, Abrar’s economy rate through the season was 2.97, while Zahid gave away 3.58 runs per overs. Abrar is a decade younger than Zahid, and therefore more attractive as a long-term investment, as the Yasir Shah era draws towards a close.If ever there had felt like a dead certainty in a Pakistan starting XI, this was it. And yet, when the team reveal came, it was Zahid who found himself being handed his Test cap by Mohammad Rizwan.”We wanted to do justice,” Pakistan coach Saqlain Mushtaq said at the close of play. “One guy [Zahid] has been in the team environment for a year, and has come close to playing without getting an opportunity. Abrar has performed in domestic cricket, but we don’t want to break a queue and fast-track someone when someone else has been waiting their turn for a year. Zahid was in the waiting list, so we decided to do him justice.”Most runs on opening day of a match•ESPNcricinfo LtdIn Pakistan cricket, keeping dissent and dissatisfaction to a minimum is a notoriously difficult task, and it’s perhaps unfair to belittle what appeared a sincere attempt to keep a squad player happy. However, form leaned heavily in the other direction, and as the day panned out, perhaps that showed.Zahid’s first over saw him concede 12 runs, including boundaries off a reverse sweep and a sweep. By the end of the day, his figures read 23-1-160-2: the most expensive full-time bowler of the pack.All-rounders The last Test match Faheem Ashraf played Test cricket, Pakistan were under the pump on the first day. It was against Australia in Karachi, where the visitors’ openers ran away in the first session and a half, scoring at well over four runs an over. Sound familiar?On that occasion, with most of his frontline options firing blanks and finding no respite in his specialist spinners, Babar Azam had turned to Faheem in the hour before tea. An asphyxiatingly accurate spell followed in which Australia scored just 11 runs in 14 overs, with Faheem sending down four maiden overs on the bounce.Unless you are particularly uncharitable, it’s difficult to point to a Test where Faheem Ashraf hasn’t either contributed with bat or ball. He’s dropped down the pecking order for Pakistan since Australia’s visit in March, for reasons that haven’t quite been made clear, but in a bowling line-up that featured three debutants and a teenager, a little more seam-bowling experience might not have gone amiss. He has always had a knack for picking up wickets, but just as importantly, Pakistan have often turned to him to rein in opposition batting line-ups that have threatened to run away with a first-innings score.Related

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But on a day when they needed to wrestle back control, Faheem wasn’t to be found in Pakistan’s starting line-up. Neither, for that matter, was left-arm spin allrounder Mohammad Nawaz, who has provided that all-round balance in Faheem’s absence over the last few Tests. Saqlain did say, with characteristically mystical flourish, that Pakistan had, in Saud Shakeel, a player who was “80 percent batter, 20 percent allrounder”, but the 38 runs he conceded in five overs suggested that Pakistan could have done with a 50-50 option at least.The absence of a player who’d more conventionally be called an allrounder also means something particularly alarming for Pakistan when they do eventually come out to bat. Remember how amusing it was that England had Livingstone batting at eight? Well, Pakistan have Naseem Shah carded at that number.Squad selection Perhaps everyone knows by now that Hasan Ali’s a streaky bowler, which makes trusting him inherently difficult. Indifferent performances in the last two series – including one at home against Australia in March – saw his Test stock reduced to the point that Pakistan felt he was no longer part of their best squad with England visiting.But selection decisions or performance evaluations don’t happen in a vacuum. Shaheen Shah Afridi is sitting out the series and, without him, the bowling attack is especially wet behind the ears. The series against Australia was played on excessively placid pitches anyway, and in the year before that, Hasan went on a run in which he took 24 wickets in three Tests and ended up being named Pakistan’s Test bowler of the year.Meanwhile, it was hard not to feel sorry for Mohammad Ali, a nagging line and length bowler on his best day. A debut on a track as flat as this, against a batting line-up as belligerent as England’s, felt like little more than a hospital pass, even if a visibly nervous Ali had a wretched day both with ball and in the field. Besides, if Pakistan really wanted a bowler of that ilk in their side, you wondered why Mohammad Abbas didn’t make the squad, with his 25 Tests confirming him as a veteran in this bowling line-up.As the adage goes, you always look a better player out of the side on a bad day. Even allowing for the fact that winter has set in to make pitch preparation more complicated, this Pindi pitch bore very little resemblance to the surfaces the venue has prepared in the domestic Quaid-e-Azam trophy, and a lot more to the one rated “poor” against Australia nine months ago.Perhaps any bowling line-up would have struggled to make an impact, but in preparing this surface, it didn’t seem like Pakistan could have made things any easier for England. But when they announced their side, they managed to do just that.

No team has made more of home advantage than MI this season – they’ve won five games at the Wankhede

Sampath Bandarupalli21-May-20231:29

Moody: Massive step for Green in his IPL career

6 – Number of 200-plus totals for Mumbai Indians in this IPL, the most by a team in an IPL season. The next highest is five by Chennai Super Kings, also in the current edition. Only two teams before Mumbai had six or more 200-plus totals in a T20 tournament – seven by Birmingham Bears and six by Yorkshire, both in the 2022 T20 Blast.5 – Successful 200-plus chases in the IPL for Mumbai, including four in this season. Only Punjab Kings (five) have won chasing 200-plus targets as often as Mumbai in the IPL. The five chases by Mumbai and Kings are also the joint-most by any team in all T20s, alongside Quetta Gladiators.5 – Consecutive 200-plus totals for Mumbai at the Wankhede Stadium. They are the first team with five 200-plus totals at a venue in a T20 tournament. The previous highest was four by RCB in the 2016 IPL at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, Yorkshire at Leeds and Northamptonshire at Northampton in the 2022 T20 Blast.3 – Consecutive matches where Sunrisers Hyderabad have conceded an individual century – by Shubman Gill (Gujarat Titans), Virat Kohli (RCB) and Cameron Green (MI). They are the first team to concede a century in three consecutive IPL matches and only the second team to do so in all T20s after Northamptonshire – Calum MacLeod, Ian Bell and Martin Guptill in 2018.9* – Individual hundreds in this IPL, including Green’s 100 not out. These are the most hundreds scored in an IPL season, surpassing eight tons in 2022.5-2 – Mumbai’s win-loss record at home in this IPL, the most home wins for any team this season. Titans and CSK won four home matches each in the league phase.5022 – Runs scored by Rohit Sharma in the IPL for Mumbai Indians. He is only the second player to score 5000-plus runs for a single franchise in the IPL, after Kohli for Royal Challengers Bangalore. Rohit is now one of the seven players with 11000-plus runs in all T20s.47 – Balls Green took to complete his century, the fastest of the ten individual hundreds conceded by Sunrisers in the IPL. The previous fastest was off 51 balls by Shane Watson for CSK in the 2018 final.128 – The partnership between Rohit and Green for the second wicket. It is the first century stand involving Rohit in the IPL in five years. His previous 100-run partnership was with Evin Lewis in 2018, when they added 108 against RCB.16 – Percentage of Sunrisers’ total scored in the death overs – 32 runs out of 200, the lowest among the 118 IPL innings where a team made 200-plus while batting first. The previous lowest was 16.26% by Rajasthan Royals against Sunrisers earlier this season, where they made 203 after scoring only 33 in the last four overs.*

He bagged a pair in his first match after taking over the Test captaincy, but has bounced back emphatically

Firdose Moonda10-Mar-2023Temba Bavuma is used to handling crises.”I always find myself in situations where I am coming in at No.5 or 6, and it’s 20 for 4 or 10 for 2 or whatever it is, and you really have to try to soak in the pressure,” he said.So when he walked out to bat with South Africa 8 for 2, the lead just 77, and the opposition eyeing a middle order that is prone to collapses, he was not panicking. “You just have to try to absorb and when the opportunity comes, try and release. I think I’ve done that fairly well in my career, albeit I didn’t have any big scores to back it up. Walking in that situation, is something that mentally I am accustomed to. My games also leans towards that.”Bavuma left six of his first eight deliveries, giving himself time to assess an atypical Wanderers surface, and had only scored 11 off his first 38 balls, which included some that kicked up off a length and others that stayed a touch low. He watched Aiden Markram nick one that he was forced to play at, and Ryan Rickelton reach for one he could have left, and knew that once the ball softened and the bowlers tired, variable bounce would be the biggest challenge.When his fifty came up, off 107 balls, it looked like Bavuma would run out of partners before the idea of a century became real. When Heinrich Klaasen top-edged a pull, the prospect of another below-par innings and unfinished business for Bavuma loomed.Enter Wiaan Mulder. “I said to him, he’s got nothing to prove. He’s done it before for the Lions, he’s done it at county level, now it’s just an opportunity for him to do what he’s been selected to do,” Bavuma said. “Maybe that that calmed him down. We have good synergy that also obviously would have helped him. I guess for us it was just trying to build that partnership. In doing that, that took the pressure off him and it was about the team.”Bavuma was also talking about himself. He was too concerned with getting the team into a position where they had batted West Indies out of the match than his own score. “My mindset was always just to stick to what I was doing. A hundred wasn’t the target. It wasn’t the objective. The objective was really to get to the end of day’s play.”The prospect of a century only became real once he entered the nineties with a cut shot off Roach that brought a small Friday afternoon crowd to life. All 2378 of them lived every ball from that point on. They slow-capped every delivery and cheered every run with increasing volume, which peaked with the four overthrows that took him a shot away from the moment people have been waiting for since Bavuma’s first Test century in 2016. “I was obviously quite happy that I got an extra four runs,” Bavuma said. “I went from 91 to 96 and that does make things mentally a bit easier.”Naturally, there were also some nerves. Since his first century at Newlands, Bavuma has never got closer than an unbeaten 95, so 96 was unfamiliar territory and he could feel things changing. “The energy started picking up, I guess in anticipation of the milestone. My emotions also started picking up and I just kind of went with it at that moment.”Temba Bavuma leaps to fend off a short ball during the course of his hundred•AFP/Getty ImagesHis 97th run was a quick single at the start of an Alzarri Joseph over that Mulder saw off. The impatience grew. The clap became a beat or two faster. The cries from the crowd sounded more desperate. “Come on Tembaaaaa,” became a plea and not a war cry.His 98th came from a flick through midwicket at the start of a Roston Chase. He got back on strike for the fourth delivery and whipped Chase again but only as far as the fielder and got another one.99. Mulder rotated strike again.99 and facing. Chase pulled out of his delivery stride. 99 and still facing. Bavuma advanced and defended into the offside.He and Mulder met in the middle for a long chat before Joseph’s next over. Mulder must have confirmed that he’d take a single as quickly as possible because that’s what he did. Then, they had another conversation, presumably with Mulder promising to run like his life depended on it if Bavuma thought a single was on. It turned out he wanted more than that. Joseph delivered a short ball asking to be cut but Bavuma slashed and missed. The Wanderers held its breath.Joseph had also overstepped, and he overcompensated with his extra ball by going too full. That was the delivery Bavuma had been waiting for. He cracked it over the covers and held the pose as the ball crossed the boundary. At the other end, Mulder whooped and swooped as though he had scored the century while Bavuma removed his helmet and raised his bat to the changeroom, to his father in the Long Room and his mother in the stands and then to every part of the ground. Eventually he turned to Mulder and they shared a bear hug. After seven years of relative run-scoring famine, Bavuma has finally been able to feast.Temba Bavuma: a pair in his first match as Test captain, and a century in the second•AFP/Getty Images”It’s been a long journey and a lot more downs than ups,” Bavuma said, maybe remembering that just four months ago, he returned from Australia unable to hold back tears and explain how South Africa had lost to Netherlands at the T20I World Cup. “I keep learning about myself every day in terms of the type of person and the type of cricketer that I am.”What we are now learning is that the usually sedate and serious Bavuma can also score runs at speed. Once he reached the hundred, he was obviously unshackled. He scored 71 runs off 81 balls and is now 29 away from a double century. For someone who had not scored a red-ball hundred at the Wanderers through a professional career based at this venue, that would be another crowning moment. “The guys are always teasing me about it (not scoring a hundred here). I can stick it to the guys in that one,” Bavuma said. “And as I said before the series, West Indies sentimentally means quite a lot so I am going to try to bat as long as I can. I’m not about to give my wicket away.”Bavuma is not the only one for whom this hundred is about more than the numbers. He is now the first black African captain from South Africa to score a century, seven years after becoming the first to score a Test hundred. The significance of it is not lost on Bavuma. “It’s about inspiring the next generation. Being a black Africa cricketer, it also allows other young black African batters to really dream they can also come and play for the Proteas and have their names entrenched in the history books.”Last week, Bavuma made history as one of only four captains to register a pair on their leadership debut and immediately questions were asked about how the leadership would affect his batting. His coach, Shukri Conrad, was asked that too and dead-batted the question saying that Bavuma was not the only player to get a pair. Conrad was the one who selected Bavuma as Test captain and Bavuma has acknowledged feeling “fully backed,” by his coach. “I’m learning a lot from him in terms of the language that he speaks and also the challenging conversations that we have. Before the game, he challenged me. He asked some really tough questions. One of them was that just because I’m captain, who says I’m not going to score two ducks?”Ask the Bavuma of 2014, who made his Test debut against West Indies at St George’s Park, what he thinks of the Bavuma of 2023, and he would be “very proud,” according to the man himself. “After everything that has happened I’m still managing to keep my head up, keep afloat and keep finding a way to move forward.”