SA vs SL, 1st Test – Jump and Joy – Stubbs and Bavuma’s centuries add color to festive Kingsmead

In an innings of two centuries, it is unusual for the first bit of praise to be written about a batter who made 15. But bear with us.

“I was in the hospital and then I thought (batting at No. 3) was the only way I could affect the game,” he said on Friday, the third morning. “I knew I had no power in my forehand. I only had real forehand shots. At No. 3, which is the hardest time to hit at Kingsmead with the ball moving, I can pretty much play with a straight bat .I don’t really need that much underhand.

“And if I can face 30 to 70 or 80 balls, it just gives the other guys a better chance to come in with a little bit of an older ball, be a little bit more free and get as big of a lead as we can.”

In the end, Mulder faced 31 balls, which was at the lower end of what he was hoping for, but he took some of the shine off the ball. When Stubbs came to the crease it was the 22nd over. Bavuma came into the 25th over and South Africa, with a lead of more than 200 runs, were already well ahead of the game. With no rain overnight, neither Stubbs nor Bavuma could have asked for better conditions to cash in on day three.

Their half-centuries came up in the first session and they continued more or less in exactly the ways we have come to know them. Stubbs played a bit more attacking than Bavumas, using his feet well to take on the spinners and finding boundaries down the ground. But he took the most pleasure out of his defensive tackles and tackles, of which there were 148.

“There’s a lot more satisfaction in that than any T20 shot: hitting long there and making the fielders toil,” he later said.

Together, Stubbs and Bavuma built South Africa’s biggest fourth-wicket partnership against Sri Lanka by “feeding off each other pretty well”, Stubbs said.

“When I get to the middle I’m pretty energetic and he actually calms me down and I keep getting him up,” he said of Bavuma. “When you hit with someone in a big partnership, it’s always nice. You get into the rhythm.”

And in the middle of the second session, on the last Friday afternoon in November with summer vacation on the horizon and a festive mood in the air, they both approached major milestones with a matching mood.

The band from Northwood School, Keshav Maharaj and Shaun Pollock’s alma mater, arrived just after 1 p.m. 13.00 with Stubbs into the 90s. By the time they were settled and ready to start, he was 96 and over. A slightly slower version of Give me hope Jo’anna than Eddy Grant’s version started. Stubbs wasn’t even a thought in his parents’ mind when the song was released in 1988. He would have heard it many times since at his home ground of St George’s Park in Gqeberha.

As the first bars sounded, Stubbs defended. The band got louder. Stubbs got Asitha Fernando off the back foot for two. Slow claps added some bass and they continued as Stubbs left a broad. He thought of a run as he worked the next one to the leg side but chose not to challenge the mid-on’s arm.

And then, as the song reached its second chorus, Stubbs chopped Asitha through square leg and called for two. Give me hope Jo’anna hit the high notes as Stubbs completed the second, leaping to his feet in his characteristic fashion. Bavuma let him own the moment and waited at the other end until the time was right to join.

“Hope before the morning comes” are the last words of the song that dared to dream of the democratic South Africa, the only one Stubbs has ever known. It is also what he has given a South African batting line-up that struggled to score hundreds before last month with two in two Tests. Add to that his maiden ODI century, against Ireland last month, and Stubbs is in rich form. He maintains that he has “no idea” how it came about.

“He said to me, ‘Listen, get me one here, I’ve got to go on strike’. That was the most nervous I felt that day”

Stubbs reveals the chat with Bavuma when the latter was close to his hundred

That kind of century-making frequency is what Bavuma has longed for throughout his international career. In 60 Tests he has had seven scores over 50, five in the 60s, five in the 70s, two in the 80s and two in the 90s, including one at Kingsmead two and a half years ago. Most of them have come with South Africa in trouble and one of the most common phrases you would have heard about them is that they were as valuable as hundreds. But they were still not a hundred, which is a number that strikes differently.

By the time Stubbs got there, Bavuma was still 11 runs away. He entered the 90s with a border, but it was a striped one: a thick border that hovered between slip and sewer. Then Bavuma added one more with a quick single to get out of the strike. The next over was fraught with danger. Asitha hit Bavuma with a delivery that nipped away, hit him on the hand and hit him again. What could have been going through his mind? Something like, “Will I ever get there?”

Bavuma got to 95 and 96 with singles off consecutive balls to find himself a shot away. Later in the race, he was bounced when he tried to play that shot – a move – and missed. Two more singles came, bookended by one over change, and in ’98 the band started again. It wasn’t Give me hope Jo’anna. It felt a little too personal given Bavuma’s home in Johannesburg and the many times people from there – and from around the country – have hoped for more from him. Bavuma had a word with Stubbs.

“He said to me, ‘Listen, get me one here, I’ve got to go on strike,'” Stubbs said. “That was the most nervous I felt today because I was like, ‘S***, I’ve got to get one here’.”

An upbeat cover by a local band called Mi Casa accompanied Bavuma’s paddle to fine legs. When he and Stubbs ran three, Sri Lanka appealed for a potential lbw and the crowd noise dissolved into a mass of confusion. Another batter, especially one who knew he had gloved it, might have started the mid-run celebration, but Bavuma reached the non-striker’s end and turned his eyes to the big screen. Heart in the mouth. Hand on bat handle. Maybe tears in the eyes.

Having waited 87 innings and 48 Tests between his first and second Test hundred, and 18 injury-riddled months between the second and third, it probably didn’t matter that Bavuma had to wait a few extra minutes to celebrate. And when UltraEdge confirmed the runs were his, he let out what can only be described as pure joy. Not relief. Not a pressure release. Joy, as his one-year-old son might know it.

Bavuma pointed his bat towards the dressing room as the band restarted and the 1700 people at Kingsmead rose to enjoy the moment with him. He heard them chanting his nickname, Malume, the Xhosa word for uncle. He hopes it’s a name earned through wisdom, but if he can continue there, there may soon be another reason.

South Africa are looking for what Stubbs called “big-daddy hundreds”, which are obviously more than a hundred – or even a daddy hundred – which in South Africa is basically the same as a hundred.

“Hundreds don’t win you top games. We call it big-daddy hundreds when you win games,” Stubbs said. “A hundred in South Africa can be a really big score somewhere else.”