While striking back at critics, Temba Bavuma wonders, "What metric is used to judge a captain?”
The South African cricket team has plenty of positives to pick from the concluded ODI World Cup, where they were eliminated by Australia in the semi-final. The team finished second on the league table, producing commanding performances one after the other. Despite the good show, their captain, Temba Bavuma, received a lot of flak for his captaincy and his spot in the team.
Almost a week after the exit of South Africa from the tournament, Bavuma, in an interaction with The Daily Maverick, opened up about the criticism.
Temba said, "I have said it from the beginning that if any of the guys stood there and said, ‘Temba, you are not the man for the job as captain,’ then I would happily walk away. These are the bunch of guys with whom we have been together since 2020. We know each other through and through, and we know what we play for. I am not the guy who is on Twitter or Facebook."
Bavuma wondered, “I don’t know what the metric is to judge someone if they’re captaining well. We won the most games in the group stage out of any South African team. We beat teams that haven’t been beaten in a while in World Cups, so what metrics are we going to use to judge whether a guy is using the job as the captain?”