Captain Temba Bavuma took a giant leap into cricketing history on Saturday, leading South Africa to victory in the World Test Championship clash against Australia. The team also dismissed the naysayers who questioned their inclusion in the final, as they had not played England or Australia in the current cycle. The win is significant for many reasons. It shatters the narrative that Test cricket is not feasible outside the Big Three—India, Australia, England—and the talk of tiering the longest format so that it remains competitive.
In the recently concluded WTC cycle, India defeated South Africa and England. South Africa beat Australia, Australia won against India, England defeated Pakistan, New Zealand beat India, and the West Indies beat Australia. It means that the standard of the longest form is at its peak, and the International Cricket Council (ICC) should disregard calls for fundamentally altering Test cricket. Sure, it’s more profitable for some boards to play the format more often than not, but it doesn’t need to be tampered with.
A more pertinent point for South African cricket is that the win represents their long-awaited tryst with destiny. Having come so close to victory on several occasions since their only ICC title in 1998, they have carried the stigma of being bad finishers for too long, and this win buries their ghosts from past horrors. Many Proteas, since their readmission in 1992, have been scarred by their inability to secure closure in the global ICC finals. This victory has the potential to change that narrative. It will also help ease concerns about the state of the five-day game in their country. At the beginning of this WTC cycle, they were forced to send a scratch Test team to New Zealand as they had prioritised their T20 league. That had promoted some alarm within the wider cricketing establishment. While they will be partial to SA20 due to cricket’s skewed commerce—the Proteas won’t play a home Test until the end of 2026—wins like this compel stakeholders to believe the test format is viable to continue investing in. Their next challenge is an away series in India, and the onus is on them to prove that the win at Lord’s was not a one-off but exemplifies their new-found grit.