South Africa's Iron Man with a giant heart, undefeated and unbroken, leads from the front at Eden Gardens for famous win

Among contemporary captains, he is the doyen of deadpan humour. He is also the Iron Man of South Africa, the small man with a giant heart, as coach Shukri Conrad described, and arguably the most important South African cricketer since their reintroduction to the cricket field, a metaphor of his country’s socio-cultural transformation. Pouching the match-winning catch and grafting the match-turning knock were straightforward chores for a man who has worn heavier burdens. The first black batter to score a Test hundred, the first black captain, the first to steer them to the elusive shores of the world champions. The heavier the burden, the tougher he becomes. So he was not to drop the catch or get out feebly. Not for his life.

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Undefeated, unbroken

In his moment of joy, he seemed like the little boy from Langa, all vivid eyes and burning desire. He let the moment soak and bubble, contained his emotions like an almost implacable Buddha, soft-edged, calmly accepting of the fates, whether they swing for him or against. It was how he batted, too, an undefeated 55, where he remained unbeaten in spirit as well. Nothing flustered him; he put behind the two whipper snappers from Jasprit Bumrah, those that flew off hard length. He did well enough to evade the bat in time. Ravindra Jadeja’s deliveries hissed past him; Kuldeep Yadav’s whirred. But his concentration remained unbroken.

He is a paradox; he might look nervous as he lines up for the ball, a visual treachery of his alignment falling apart. But when the ball nears him, he rearranges the rebelling parts into a congruous whole. He is calm, even soporific, a square silhouette of perfection. The seedy streets of Langa shine in him still. He faced older boys bowling down the slope in the corners of a street they called ‘Karachi, ‘Lord’s’ and ‘MCG’. At night, he listened to the crackle of gunshots. He was made to remain unbroken.

Block by block, sometimes with a measured blow-by-blow, he built his innings. At times, in his hands, the bat resembled a surgeon’s scalpel; sometimes a giant slab of granite. “I am a guy who backs my defence. My game is that simple, I just look to play around my defence. It was more a case of just playing what is in front of you. Keep your nerve, but importantly keep the belief that the result will go our way,” he recollects.

He obeyed simple fundamentals. He built an invisible cage around him and played within it. He didn’t poke or lunge; he did not swipe across; he resisted preemptions, and he compressed his world into his small, secure space. The stray mistake was difficult to avoid on a pitch where he couldn’t have even trusted his shadow, but he quickly dragged it to the recycle bin. The minimalistic back-lift equipped him to deal with the grubbers. Anything that soared was adeptly left. The low centre of gravity perhaps helped him to deal with low-fliers better than some of his taller teammates. His strides are short, but quick and definite.

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The 55 not out would remain special, not because of the volume but because of its match-influencing quality. It doesn’t surprise coach Shukri Conrad. “Didn’t I tell you he is one of the finest batsmen in the world (on current form)?” He averages 38.42 in Tests, but in his last 17 innings, he has notched up three hundreds and six half-centuries. He batted through the pain of a strained hamstring in the WTC final and stitched a crucial 147-run second-innings stand with Aiden Markram. An equally staggering record is that he has not lost a single Test he has captained (10 wins and a draw).

Under his quiet leadership, Conrad reflects, South Africa looks a well-knit side, enjoying each other’s success. “They look like a bunch of mates. They are a mix of diverse cultures, which the team has embraced. It’s a culture that has developed organically,” he elaborates. As obsessed as he is about winning, he doesn’t miss the larger perspectives of life. “You have ambitions and expectations, but you also know that life can happen. Cricket can happen,” he said on the match’s eve. Life happened, cricket happened, and the man from Langa cast his giant shadows on the ground. Forty thousand eyes wouldn’t wither the little boy who woke up to gunshots.

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