Bavuma to speak to ‘relevant people’ regarding his role as Proteas captain

Temba Bavuma will speak to “relevant people” regarding his position as the Proteas' white ball captain in the aftermath of the team’s disappointing failure to qualify for the semifinal stage of the ICC T20 World Cup.

Minnows the Netherlands stunned South Africa by 13 runs at the Adelaide Oval on Sunday to send them crashing out of the tournament in what was the last match for coach Mark Boucher, who is departing to take over as coach of the Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Bavuma, who has been under constant pressure at the tournament as he struggled to find form with the bat, said he won’t be rushing into a decision on his captaincy future.

“It’s been a tricky time,” he said about his tournament where he scored 70 runs in five innings.

“I think to be considering that now, a lot of it will be emotional in terms of my role as the captain of the team. It is probably something I will have to think about, I will speak to the relevant people and have to see who comes in as a coach.”

Cricket South Africa (CSA) last week named Malibongwe Maketa as interim coach for the Proteas’ three-match Test tour of Australia next month but it is not known who is going to be the full-time coach.

“Generally when you have changes like that, the new coach comes in with their own style, they might find a different leader to execute whatever vision or style of play they have,” Bavuma said.

“It will be emotional now if I thought about all of that and whatever happens I think I have carried myself with dignity through the good and the bad times. If I were to leave, I would leave with my pride intact.”

Bavuma admitted that the constant criticism he received took its toll on him.

“Mentally it does eat at you as a player. You try and manage your mental space as much as you can. You try and control what gets to you but with social media, whatever gets said out there always gets to you.

“I have always tried to keep a level head through the good and bad times, tried to be as close to myself as possible. Probably not just for myself but for this group, we are going to take a lot of flak as a group and probably rightly so.

“But we are going to have to find a way to bounce back and find ways to get back to the good old days.”

Bavuma suggested knowing they had to beat the Netherlands might have played on the South Africans' minds.

“I wouldn’t say I felt a different type of pressure but we knew we had to win the game and obviously we didn’t do that.

“The mistakes we made were on the field and those are all tactical decisions at the end of the day. It all comes down to tactics and execution of your skills and we didn’t do that.”

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