{"id":184271,"date":"2025-06-14T17:14:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T17:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/184271\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T17:14:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T17:14:15","slug":"wtc-final-south-africa-are-worthy-champions-pat-cummins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/184271\/","title":{"rendered":"WTC Final &#8220;South Africa are worthy champions&#8221; &#8211; Pat Cummins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Temba Bavuma \u00a9 Gallo Images<\/p>\n<p>It is easy to be magnanimous in victory \u2013 less so in defeat \u2013 but Australian captain, Pat Cummins, gave due credit to opposite number Temba Bavuma and man-of-the-match Aiden Markram after South Africa completed a hard-fought, emotional five-wicket victory in the World Test Championship final at Lord\u2019s on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dstv.com\/en-za\/buy\/dstv-packages\/dstv-stream\/sports\/?utm_source=supersport&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=mcg_ss_com_dstv_ss-ott_supersport_cricket_article-banner-referral-generic-vas-2024\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1749921252_972_in-article-banner-42.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought the way he (Bavuma) played was fantastic. He gave us that half chance early on (dropped at slip by Steve Smith on two) but then didn&#8217;t give us another look until he got out. He had a big partnership with Aiden, so I thought he played really well,\u201d Cummins said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn terms of leading, it&#8217;s always pretty hard unless you&#8217;re playing underneath someone to judge them so I don&#8217;t know about his captaincy but, from the outside, he looked good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Australian captain also had some strong words for those who doubted the veracity of South Africa\u2019s route to the final and wheather they were \u2018worthy\u2019 champions having reached Lord\u2019s without playing either of England or Australia in the two-year cycle of \u2018league\u2019 matches:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn terms of the way they made it here, they made it fair and square &#8211; everyone has a slightly different route to make the final but they absolutely deserve to make the final and showed why they are very deserving champions,\u201d Cummins said.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/supersportbet.com\/register\/?utm_source=ss&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;utm_campaign=SuperSport+Website%22%20target=%22blank%22\" target=\"_blank\" data-anchor=\"?utm_source=ss&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;utm_campaign=SuperSport+Website%22%20target=%22blank%22\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/ssbet-article_banner-habanero-may25.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As for Markram\u2019s heroic 136 which anchored the Proteas\u2019 fourth innings run chase towards 282 \u2013 the highest total of the match \u2013 Cummins was once again full of praise:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was pretty hard to dislodge. He batted really well and kept the scoreboard ticking over as well, which can be frustrating. A few of us have played alongside him in IPL and he\u2019s very well respected, he&#8217;s a good man, Aiden. So yeah, unfortunately for us, he kind of made it look pretty easy out there and just built a big innings. We threw a fair bit at him but he had an answer for everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Temba Bavuma \u00a9 Gallo Images It is easy to be magnanimous in victory \u2013 less so in defeat&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-184271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114682846734032456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}