Ongama Gcwabe
The year 2023 was probably Temba Bavuma's most successful in South Africa's green and gold colours.
The right-handed batter was named captain of the Test team at the beginning of the year and scored a career-best 172 in his first series captaining the Test team. In white-ball cricket, Bavuma was enjoying a rich vein of form. He scored centuries against England, West Indies, and Australia, establishing himself as the backbone of both the Test and ODI teams.
While opposition players could not stop Bavuma's form, injuries did, as a right adductor strain ruled him out of the fourth ODI against Australia in Centurion, a month before the start of the 2023 ODI World Cup in India. Bavuma carried that injury into the World Cup and despite his team doing well reaching the semi-final, Bavuma did not look the version of himself that we had seen all year long leading up to the World Cup.
That wasn't the last of the injuries, as the skipper missed this year's New Year's Test in Cape Town due to an injury that he had picked up in the Boxing Day Test in Centurion. Most recently, the right-handed batter missed the all-important Bangladesh series due to an injury, although he was recalled to the squad yesterday for the two-match series against Sri Lanka.
