‘Fantastic leader’ Temba Bavuma still has a couple of years left in him for Proteas, says Vernon Philander

The ICC Champions Trophy has already seen England captain Jos Buttler walk the plank after his team’s exit, but former Proteas all-rounder Vernon Philander would not like to see the same happen to Temba Bavuma.

Proteas ODI captain Bavuma is once again in the firing line after overseeing his team’s 50-run defeat to New Zealand in the Champions Trophy semi-final in Lahore on Wednesday.

It is the second consecutive major ODI semi-final the South Africans have lost under Bavuma’s leadership, after also being defeated by Australia at the same stage of the World Cup in Kolkata 18 months ago. 

Philander, though, does believe the fault can be solely laid at Bavuma’s door.

“I think he’s a fantastic leader,” Philander said of the Proteas’ skipper on ESPNcricinfo’s Match Day show. “I don’t think we play near enough ODI cricket to lay judgement down on it. 

“If you look at his numbers, you look at his records in ODI cricket, I think he has been a wonderful player for South Africa. I think he has led from the front with the bat.

“Of course, this evening he just couldn’t get going, but yeah, they were heavily reliant on his form to get South Africa to where they are this evening – obviously falling one hurdle short of another final.”

Philander claims Bavuma has the respect of the entire Proteas’ change-room, especially considering what he’s achieved with the Test side in also leading them to the World Test Championship final at Lord’s later this year.

“I think what he has done over the last 24 months is that he has started to win that change-room over,” Philander said.

“I think he’s done phenomenally well in the Test match arena (where they will play the 2025 championship final).

“I wouldn’t make a call too early. It’s still early days. I think Temba still has a couple of years left in him.”

Personally, Bavuma enjoyed his best ICC tournament of his career thus far, striking successive half-centuries and averaging 57 during this Champions Trophy.

But unfortunately, he was dismissed for 56 off 71 balls at a strike-rate of 78.87 at a critical juncture of the semi-final, which prompted accusations that he batted too slowly, with the Proteas chasing a record 363 to win.

“Yeah, look, I do think it (target) was above par. I think as well as they bat, we felt that if (the target was) anything around 350 – not over 350 – we’d back ourselves to chase the score, with the wicket hopefully getting better,” Bavuma said.

“From a batting point of view, we just weren’t able to really get those partnerships. There were one or two partnerships there, but I think you probably needed either myself or Rassie van der Dussen to go on and emulate what their top four batters did.

“But yeah, 360 was always going to be tough. It was always going to require someone to play well. We had David (Miller) who did that, but we probably needed someone else as well.

“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to set that foundation for them. Little bit of a soft dismissal, at least from my side. I think that just left too much for our middle-order.”