In 2014, a South African team, for the first time in history, lifted a cricket World Cup trophy. It was the 2014 U19 World Cup in UAE during which South Africa brushed aside Pakistan in the final to win their first and only such title so far. The tournament gave them two future international stars in Kagiso Rabada and Aiden Markram.
Rabada is already a modern-day great, a globetrotting fast bowling royalty.
Markram, on the other hand, was earmarked for future success from an early age thanks to his strokeplay and leadership potential.
Markram justified the hype by leading South Africa to a U19 World Cup triumph where he also finished as their leading run-getter. Then at the age of 23, he became the second youngest captain to lead the international men’s team.
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Now, he has added more weight to his full-time South Africa captaincy claim by leading his SA20 franchise Sunrisers Eastern Cape to back-to-back finals, the first of which culminated into a title win last year.
Impressed by his SA20 success last year, Sunrisers Hyderabad also handed him the captaincy reins for the IPL 2023.
Markram is already South Africa captain in T20Is and it looks inevitable that he will be handed the responsibility on a full-time basis in the other two formats soon enough.
It’s a claim that is backed by fast bowling legend Dale Steyn who continues to monitor Markram from close quarters through his coaching roles with the Sunrisers Eastern Cape and Sunrisers Hyderabad.
However, Steyn feels that South Africa have multiple candidates with each having a strong claim to lead the national team.
So South Africa have got a real headache in terms of who they select as captain.,” Steyn told News18 CricketNext on Thursday. “They’ve got many, many guy that can do it. But if we’re specifically speaking about Aiden, I can strongly support him in the sense that I am part of his coaching staff. And, you know, watching him go about his business in this SA20 has been fantastic. The way that he’s rallied everybody, the way that he’s got everybody together, the chats that he does on the field, the chats that he does off the field in the dressing room has been pretty amazing.”
Steyn, one of the greatest fast bowlers to have played the game, feels that Markram has shown his malleability and top-notch communication skills by gelling well with the local players in IPL where the language can sometimes prove to be a barrier.
“I watched him (Markram) last year at the IPL. I thought it was really good. And it’s a tough gig at the IPL to get the buy-in of the local players. A lot of the local players, one, they don’t speak a lot of good English. And secondly, sometimes they don’t pick up the accents as well. So when you’re talking as a foreign captain, you have to almost talk slightly slower, slightly louder, more pronounced so that everyone can hear you. And I thought Aiden was able to do that and articulate that very well to the local players, especially younger guys, because you want to keep everyone’s attention. And I think that’s one thing that he was able to visibly see and visibly notice. He was able to make that adjustment,” Steyn said.
Besides his ability to establish a repo with teammates belonging to different cultural backgrounds, Steyn adds, Markram has got a great cricketing brain.
“And then, obviously, from a cricketing point of view, he’s got a great brain. He’s a good thinker. And then he leads really well with both bat and in the field. I mean, the catch that he took the other night was simply amazing. And that’s the kind of standard that he set for himself. But it really raises the team, too. So he doesn’t just talk the talk. He actually walks the talk. So, yeah. If South Africa decides to go with somebody like Aiden Markram in the future to captain them, I’m giving that a thumbs up,” Steyn said.
Steyn though feels that Temba Bavuma, who remains the first-choice captain in Tests and ODIs for South Africa, is good enough to continue in the role.
Bavuma has been South Africa captain 61 times across formats – 3 Tests, 33 ODIs and 25 T20Is – and has a good record winning 36 of them, losing 22 with three producing no results.
“I think Temba Bavuma is still very much a good captain. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him. I think leading into the World Cup, he was averaging close to 100 with a strike-rate of over 100, somewhere there. So, you know, are we looking at just numbers or are we looking at how a captain gets the best out of his team? So, you know, it’s a bit of an in-betweener right now. But I do feel that there’s many a guy within the South African setup that can captain the South African team,” Steyn said.
While there’s no questioning Bavuma’s captaincy, his form with the bat has been under the scanner, especially after how he fared at the 2023 ODI World Cup where South Africa made it to the semi-finals. In eight matches at the showpiece event, Bavuma mustered 145 runs at 18.12.
“Aiden has obviously done extremely well in taking the Sunrisers Eastern Cape to two finals, winning it last year and then into this final. And… somebody like Keshav Maharaj… is also, I think, a great thinker, a very good leader. You’ve seen David Miller, who is captain of the Paarl Royals,” Steyn said.
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