By Admin 
There is now wide-ranging acceptance that attacking batting is the best form of defence, especially on pitches that favour the bowlers disproportionately. But Temba Bavuma is an old-fashioned batter who seemingly thinks otherwise.
“I try to play around my defence,” Bavuma said on Sunday, after leading his side to a 30-run victory over India here and help take a 1-0 lead in the two-match Test series.
“You’d expect the way the wicket played, more from day three, day four onwards.
“That being said, this is what you expect when you come to India. And I think there are areas that we can improve within our batting. We will make sure that we take the little learnings and come out a better outfit in the second Test.”
The 35-year-old said that India losing captain Shubman Gill to a neck spasm that limited his batting to four runs in the first essay was an advantage.
“You need a little bit of luck. Unfortunately, they lost their captain and he’s obviously a big player. I guess that probably made things slightly easier for us.”
Simon Harmer was the Player of the Match for his eight wickets and Bavuma stated that the 36-year-old had bolstered South Africa in a big way.
“Simon’s got over a thousand wickets (in First Class cricket). So he knows what he’s doing. He is tall, so the ball obviously comes from a higher trajectory. And he has good control of his pace and he’s able to put revs on it. He has made our bowling, especially spin, more formidable as we relied heavily [earlier] on Keshav [Maharaj].”