Pat Cummins hails South Africa’s batting after WTC Final loss

Australian skipper Pat Cummins gave credit to South Africa after the latter claimed a five-wicket win in the World Test Championship final at Lord’s. Chasing 282 for the win was always going to be challenging for the Proteas against a quality Australian bowling line-up however Aiden Markram and Temba Bavuma played match-winning knocks.

While Markram played the most important innings of his career, Bavuma showed all the grit despite a hamstring injury. Markram scored a match-winning knock of 136 runs whereas Bavuma scored a gritty knock of 66 runs.

The duo added 147 runs for the third wicket to take South Africa close to the target. Cummins admitted the opposition didn’t give them a lot of chances in the fourth innings.

Cummins said in the post-match presentation, “Maybe if we had batted another session as well, the conditions kind of helped us a little bit more. They were fantastic, that fourth innings, wasn’t a lot in that wicket but they did not really give us a chance. A bit of both, it has been a wonderful two years, the guys have performed really well to get us here, did not come together this game, no doubt for the first two days, the bowlers were fantastic and always looked like the ball was darting around.”

The Australian captain said the conditions didn’t help them a lot in the final innings as there wasn’t much help like the first two days and gave credit to Bavuma and Markram.

Pat concluded, “You were always clapping each run but knowing it’s looking like the wicket was starting to flatten out, again it can change over here quickly in England, unfortunately it did not really do that for us. We gave just about everything a chance, I thought Lyono bowled particularly well here, looked threatening, just did not quite get a wicket, Aiden was fantastic and Temba, that partnership did not really give us a chance. They showed why they are in this final. Deserved champions, all facets really, on all four days they just kept themselves in the game. When they got a sniff, they took a few wickets, fantastic, so congratulations to Temba, the staff and all the players.”

Australia will now tour the West Indies for three Test matches to kick off their WTC 2025-27 cycle.