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Champions! Proteas! One of the best Test matches I have ever watched in my life! What a win! What a comeback!
Last week I was writing about a 214-run hiding in Durban. Today I'm writing about an innings and 31 run win the other way. That's Test cricket, and that's also, very specifically, us.
Australia won the toss in Gqeberha and put us in to bat on a wet pitch, under rain-grey skies, 1-0 down in the series. It did not start well. South Africa stuttered through a rain-ruined first day and at one point were sitting on 111 for 6.
That's where Temba Bavuma took over. He batted for nine hours and turned 111 for 6 into 179 off his own bat, with Marco Jansen (85) and Simon Harmer (82) putting on a record eighth-wicket stand of 183 alongside him to drag South Africa to 425 for 9 declared, a captain's innings built on sheer stubbornness, not fireworks, with the tail refusing to just make up the numbers.
Then Jansen turned around and ripped through Australia's top order for his fifth Test five-wicket haul, bowling them out for 99 and enforcing the follow-on. Australia fought, Steve Smith battling through a neck injury, but it wasn't enough. South Africa won by an innings and 31 runs.
Four days after a 214-run defeat, this team went to Gqeberha, slipped to 111 for 6, and still won by an innings. That's determination, discipline and self-belief, in that order, exactly why this side wears the World Test Championship crown. You can question plenty about this Proteas team, but not their ability to get off the canvas.
And that's the flex, really. Being South African is a flex that includes people who made pineapple beer during lockdown because the bottle stores were shut and we weren't going to be told what to do with our own fruit. It includes surviving Stage 8 loadshedding and still turning up to work the next day with a joke about it. We don't know how to stay down, and neither do our sports stars. You never write us off.
Next stop: Newlands, Cape Town, 27–31 October, for the series decider. I would not want to be Australia walking into that one.
One more thing: the Springbok Women are also in Cape Town this week, hosting Ireland in a historic first-ever series on SA soil at Athlone Stadium on Saturday 24 October at 15:00, with the second Test on 31 October, also 15:00. Ireland arrive ranked fifth in the world, but our women go in on good form after wins over Italy and Spain in the WXV Global Series, a Rugby Africa Women's Cup title, and a drawn series against the USA earlier this year. If you;’re in Cape Town, please go support the Springbok Women too.
Champions, I love you. 1-all!