Teamba Bavuma web ST

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South Africa captain Temba Bavuma has seen a dip in his strike rate in the last year while opening the batting for his team. Bavuma’s strike rate is the lowest among opening batters in the top-six ranked teams. The Proteas skipper was also seen struggling big time in the recently concluded series against India. However, his coach Mark Boucher sees no issues with Bavuma’s strike rate and explained Bavuma’s struggles against India.

Boucher pointed out that the batter struggled against only one Indian bowler but was good against the rest of them. The South African coach said that Bavuma found it tough to deal with the challenges posed by Bhuvneshwar Kumar because the pacer bowled exceptionally well with the new ball. He also blamed the uneven bounce in the pitches for Bavuma’s shabby show with the bat.

"Temba struggled during the tour. There's no doubt. But he only really struggled against one bowler and that was [Bhuvneshwar] Kumar. Most of the guys struggled against him. Let's give him credit where it's due. Kumar is a fantastic bowler in those conditions,” Bouched was quoted by ESPNCricinfo.

“There were times when the ball was swinging a lot which makes him very, very dangerous. Also, the ball was up and down a lot, especially with the new ball," he added.

Notably, Bavuma scored just 61 runs in 4 T20Is at a strike rate of 103.38. He was only ahead of Quinton de Kock (who missed two games) in terms of runs scored but was at the bottom in regards to the strike rate. Bavuma scored just 13 runs off 25 balls he faced from Kumar in the series, with one dismissal, at a strike rate of 52.00.

However, the South African batter aggregated 48 runs off 34 balls he faced from the rest of India's attack, at a strike rate of 141.18 which proves what Mark Boucher said above is indeed a fact.