If you’re still counting the number of qualities that helped Temba Bavuma rally his troops for a triumph as massive as the ICC World Test Championship, I will give you another — being close to the right people.

I believe he had a lot of discussions with our rugby captain Siya Kolisi, who the sporting world knows as a highly accomplished Springboks skipper. Under Kolisi, South Africa won back-to-back rugby World Cups in 2019 at Japan and 2023 at France. I’ve watched a fair bit of Bavuma and noticed how he came to terms with dealing with the pressures of being a black captain of South Africa. There is a possibility that Kolisi and Bavuma are represented by the same agency, but surely they have shared a lot of information, and somewhere down the line, those chats have proved fruitful. Bavuma has been transformed into an astute leader of men. There was no shortage of criticism for Bavuma, but never underestimate what an individual can do in his own quiet way. He developed the self-belief and passed it on to his team.