CHOKE’S ON YOU

THE inevitable C-word came up as Proteas skipper Temba Bavuma was welcomed back to South Africa on Wednesday, following his side’s World Test Championship (WTC) final victory over the weekend.

South Africa clinched the WTC final at Lord’s on Saturday, beating Australia by five wickets at the home of cricket.

Bavuma was asked at a press conference in Johannesburg if the Proteas team can finally dispel the harsh chokers tag, and his response was: “As much as the Australians, I mean we were saying it in the field, I don’t think in the group it’s ever something we were concerned about.

“We’ve been confident enough that we’ve been playing good cricket, and we’ve been getting ourselves into positions where you can be in finals. Like anything, you’ve got to just keep going, you’ve got to keep being relentless in that pursuit and it was always that belief that at some point, the harder we knock on that door, that door is eventually going to open.

“So you [as a player] don’t believe that it was our tag or label to carry. Yes, there’s a responsibility that you always have when you wear the Proteas badge, but I don’t think anyone here can say now we’re not chokers, because it was never a thing of ours. We never spoke about it in team meetings.

“So nothing is different [after the WTC win] from that point of view.”

Though it’s been 33 years of heartache in ICC World Cup events, if you don’t count the 1998 Champions Trophy, this victory could spark a new era for South African cricket, believed Bavuma.

He said: “I think, as a team’s perspective, in terms of the legacy that we’d like to leave behind, we’d like to be the start of a team that encourages and inspires other teams to start winning trophies…”