South Africa Test captain Temba Bavuma backed his team’s progress to the World Test Championship (WTC) following criticism regarding their relatively easy schedule in the 2023-25 cycle as well. However, the Proteas did not play in the subcontinent, nor did they have matches against big teams like Australia and England in their schedule as well.

However, South Africa started their cycle with a two-match Test series against India at home. Their rest of the series in the cycle were all two-match affairs only. They also faced a whitewash against New Zealand, where they put out a second-string squad. After that they recorded three consecutive series wins over the West Indies, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan as well, to set up a match against Australia in the final.

“If you look at South Africa, they’ve got to the final by beating pretty much nobody,” Vaughan told Fox Cricket.

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“I wouldn’t like to respond to it (the critics) . We are in the final, that’s the only response that I have,” Bavuma said in an interview with the Hindustan Times.

“We’d love to play more in South Africa. We’d love to be able to test our skills a lot more. We’d also like to be able to test our mettle a lot more. I think of the India series we played here at home, which ended 1-1. It was only a two-match series, and I think the end of that series was a bit of an anticlimax. I think England played about 22 Tests last year. We played 12, that’s almost 50 percent. So, you know, hopefully, you don’t really get those types of disparities.” Bavuma further added.

Although there is a long way to go for the WTC Final, Australia will have the upperhand as they will try to defend the title with a win at Lord’s. Former South African players like AB de Villiers, Shaun Pollock, and JP Duminy have said Temba Bavuma and company as underdogs against Australia.

“I guess they have their reasons for seeing us as underdogs. I think many people would have written us off in terms of getting to this point, looking at how our campaign started, our Test Championship started and look to go and win seven Test matches in a row,” Bavuma said.”That’s something that’s not really normal and doesn’t happen everyday. Whereas, you think of a powerhouse like Australia who, I mean, they’re defending the Test Championship trophy. So you can understand why they see themselves as favourites.”