Markram sets the marker for a South Africa cricket legend

Mumbai: Some narratives are hard to beat. It was said in commentary that South Africa had never won an ICC trophy. Until another expert corrected and said, 'well, they did win the 1998 Champions Trophy, when it was known by another name'. Aiden Markram was immersed in the middle at Lord's, else he might have wanted to scream out loud, what about the 2014 U-19 World Cup he led South Africa to a title win in?
But then, Markram is not that sort. All through his 207-ball, 383-minute stay at the crease, in which he denied the greatest Test bowling attack there is, to help South Africa get over the line against Australia to the World Test Championship title, he never allowed himself to break into a smile. Lest his focus waver, resolve soften.
Not when he got to his eighth Test hundred late on Day 3, not when the Player-of-the-Match was finally dismissed on 136, even though by then his team was within touching distance of history.
Markram had walked in as opener in pursuit of a 282-run fourth innings run chase. When he was finally done and walked back through the Lord's Long Room up to the storied balcony, the standing ovation, the unending applause, he received was in appreciation of the greatest knock by a South African batter.
'Un-frickin-believable,' was teammate Marco Jansen's description of Markram's epic while talking to former Proteas skipper Graeme Smith, doing TV duties. Compared to Smith, South Africa's third-highest run scorer, Markram is a lesser figure. Or to Hashim Amla, who scored more runs than Smith, or Jacques Kallis, who safely tops the chart. But none of those greats could fashion a masterpiece like Markram to exorcise the ghosts of the past.
Test hundreds should not be compared to white-ball brilliance; the fabric of the two is entirely different. But the burden of the past weighed so heavily on South Africa, with their repeated losses in knockout matches at world events – two quarter-finals, 12 semi-finals, and the 2024 T20 World Cup final – that this knock had to circumvent challenges that went way beyond the usual vagaries of the pitch in a fourth innings run chase. Markram was among the crestfallen South African 15 who lost to India in the T20 final in Barbados last year.
Markram, 30, never flinched when Pat Cummins was probing with the new ball. He took Mitchell Starc on. He had the answers to Josh Hazlewood's nagging lengths. To Nathan Lyon, he played mostly off the backfoot, adroitly, so that the attempted spinning off-breaks from the rough would not run through the gate.
Externally, stoic all the way through, the right-hander, in attack and defence, held such a sway over proceedings that even Australia could not penetrate.
For eight years, Markram's chequered career was of unfulfilled promise. A great batting hope from his U-19 days who had all the strokes in the book, he had never found the purple patch a great career must experience. If ever he needed an uplift, he has got one with the most defining innings of his career.
Markram could not have done it alone. It was his 147-run third wicket partnership with skipper Temba Bavuma that took South Africa past Australia. Markram and Bavuma have been interchanged as captain across formats by the selectors, but the two have plenty of mutual respect. It was Markram who convinced Bavuma, hobbling due to a hamstring injury, to battle pain and continue batting in the post tea session on Day 3, according to head coach Shukri Conrad.
'A lot of it came from him (Bavuma), he has always led from the front, found ways to score runs and these sorts of knocks are something people will remember you for,' Markram said about Bavuma's 66.
'Markram was unbelievable,' Bavuma said in admiration of Markram. 'Stats are important, but character is what we look at and Aiden has that.'
On his own innings, Markram agreed he 'hadn't scored more important runs'. Absolutely, no one in the rainbow nation would disagree.

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