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One of the more popular debates in the Wisden offices concerns the identity of the best ‘bad’ player in the game. On some level it’s a little cruel, but the air quotes give it away. The point is that they’re not ‘bad’ players, far from it. It’s just that the body of work belies the eye test. It’s therefore more plea than slur, an entreaty to a player we like and rate to buck his ideas up.

Along with (for my money) Zak Crawley and KL Rahul, Aiden Markram – square-shouldered, handsome, correct, prodigious – occupies a rarefied place in this conversation, a player of obvious gifts whose charisma puts him in open dispute with his workmanlike average.

And what’s more he started so well, which makes his decline all the more unfathomable. In late March 2018, the game to Markram, then 23, appeared almost too easy: following his 152 at Johannesburg against Australia, his second ton against them that month, he’d racked up four hundreds and two 90s from his first 10 Tests. A great career seemed assured.

It's still not clear what happened next. He has said that his technique against the new ball fell away, and that he’s had to rebuild it. He may too be tempted by the idea that his development was stymied by South Africa’s deprioritising of Test cricket.

In some respects the white ball was actually his saviour: Markram’s leading-man role in the inaugural SA20 in 2023, smashing runs and leading Sunrisers to victory, seemed to release something in him. A fortnight later, against West Indies, he made a restorative sixth Test hundred, and followed up with 96 in the next Test. Such is the lot of the South African Test cricketer, however, that he would have to wait until Boxing Day, and the visit of India, for his next hit.

The gap was worth it. First, at Centurion, South Africa pulled off an extraordinary innings win on the back of Dean Elgar’s inspired 185. The second match at Cape Town, slated as Elgar’s last, would be played on a corrugated mess of a surface that would later be penalised by the ICC.

On the first morning South Africa fought manfully to get up to a respectable 55 all out. In reply India batted long and deep into the evening session, occupying a mammoth 34.5 overs. By the close of day one, South Africa had negotiated 17 overs to finish three down for 62, with Aiden Markram – somehow – 36 not out.

Markram resumed on day two with a clear gameplan. Stay legside to swerve the throat-balls, and crouch deep into the full ones to smother the grubbers. Anything short he would carve, and if Bumrah and Siraj went full, he would throw himself at the drive. He brought up his fifty with a punch on the up, and raced towards the ton in a blur. The 29th over, bowled by Prasidh Krishna, went for 20 to take him into the nineties, before Bumrah was flailed through point to take him there. When he’s finally caught at long-on the score is 162-8. Of the 27 boundaries struck in the innings, he’s smashed 19 of them.

It’s not enough – India will stagger to their 79-run target, three wickets down. But the significance, for South African cricket, went much deeper than five inadequate sessions in Cape Town, as, in the shadow of Elgar’s departure, his long-anointed successor played the innings of his life.

Markram’s re-emergence has coincided with South Africa’s. He is now their most important batter, one half of a quirky double act with Temba Bavuma. His standalone 89 against Pakistan at Centurion last month, counterpunching through a low-scoring scrap, was a mini-Newlands, and it took South Africa to the promised land.

The World Test Championship final is at Lord’s in June. If the estimable Bavuma, quietly electrifying this team, is to make history, then it’s likely to be Markram, the natural leader who briefly lost his way, who will take him there.

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