Markram goes from 0 to 102 to help South Africa close in on WTC final win

LONDON (AP) - Aiden Markram has been dropped twice by South Africa in his test career.

It’s his own fault.

Markram set such a superlative standard out of the gate - three centuries and two 90s in his first six months - that when the runs stopped raining, he was labelled a flash in the pan.

South Africa’s white-ball captain was eventually recalled to the red-ball side by new coach Shukri Conrad at the start of 2023 and responded with his first century in two years against the West Indies and 106 against India in Cape Town to end that year.

Markram then went 16 innings and counting without a hundred, including a duck when he chopped on against Australia pacer Mitchell Starc on Wednesday, the opening day of the World Test Championship final at Lord’s.

On Friday, South Africa needed someone to hang tough and score big when it started a daunting chase of 282 to win the final, and Markram responded on a flat, slow pitch with an unbeaten 102. He and captain Temba Bavuma, who nursed a hamstring injury to be on 65, produced an unbroken stand of 143

Markram teared up when he reached his eighth test hundred in the day’s second-to-last over. His celebrations were muted, knowing the job was not quite done. He and Bavuma have South Africa 69 runs from a momentous win.

"We certainly know he is someone for the big occasion, of that there is no doubt," South Africa batting coach Ashwell Prince said.

“He has done some technical work but not a lot. In the last little while he has had a tendency to push his hands away from his body and cut across the ball but it was not a big fix and as soon as he saw a few videos, it was simple.

"Albeit in a losing cause at Newlands, on a difficult pitch, he played an unbelievable innings against India last year and scored a ton on that surface - so we know what he is capable of."

Despite the first-innings duck, Markram remained confident in his technique after scoring five fifties in 13 innings at the Indian Premier League. They weren’t in the same format but they put him in a good headspace for the WTC final.

He’s in the running for the player of the final. When Bavuma turned to Markram’s part-time off-spin - three wickets in 45 previous tests - he had an outsized impact on the match.

In the first innings, he bagged Steve Smith and broke Australia’s biggest partnership, and in the second innings he ended Australia’s seemingly never-ending batting by dismissing last man Josh Hazlewood.

Moments later, he had his own bat in hand to open South Africa’s chase, and was closing in on finishing Australia’s reign as the WTC champion.