Maia Bouchier and her father Anthony's daddy-daughter days involved "sitting on the couch and just watching the best players in the world bat all day," just like they did in Bloemfontein on Sunday. Sort of.
Maia was the one doing the batting - and it was only for three hours and 42 minutes, so not quite all day - while Anthony was in the stands at the Mangaung Oval. He watched as the daughter he raised around the game flicked and pulled and eventually also drove her way to a maiden Test hundred on debut. Afterwards, he got to celebrate it with her and her England team.
"My dad came into the changing-room, which was really nice, and he actually made a little speech, and everyone started crying. So that was really sweet," Bouchier said at the post-match press conference. "Let's just say it was along the lines of, ''I'm very proud and I think it was the best day of my life.' And that's what got everyone."
Emotions always run high around Tests, given the sense of occasion and history attached to the format, and especially around women's Tests because of how rare they are. In the England camp, they have a tradition of the nearest debutant presenting the next one with their Test cap, which meant Maia was capped by Danni Wyatt-Hodge, perhaps a little later in her career than she would have hoped.
Since Bouchier made her white-ball debut in September 2021, England have played five Tests and she may have thought herself in line for at least one of them. In 2022, she was part of an England A side that played against the touring South Africans but could not displace Emma Lamb in the Test side. Now, on the return leg, so to speak, she was given an opportunity ahead of Sophia Dunkley and there could not have been a better country for it to happen for Maia.
Anthony has connections to South Africa and facilitated tours between the English club he founded, Primrose Hill Cricket Club (PHCC), and South African sides in the Western Cape. Maia remembers going on some of those tours as a child, and spending time on cricket grounds in South Africa, at a time when young girls were scarce on the cricket scene. Though Anthony never played at a professional level himself, he has been heavily involved in the business of cricket. In 2000, he was one of the principal investors who created Wisden Online, which, three years later, bought this very website (Cricinfo, as it was called then). At the time, Maia was just four years old and would have known only the basics of her father's love of the game. As she grew older, she would also have been able to gauge his ambitions for her.
"Obviously, this is very special for him because he's waited a long time for it as well," she said. "What I remember was us watching Test match cricket together just for five days straight, sitting on the couch and just watching the best players in the world bat for all day. I think that's what he really wanted me to do. Obviously this is my first Test and to just go out there and play how I did, I'm super proud of myself and I know he's proud of me. So that's all I can hope for."
Bouchier played with none of the nerves of a newbie and raced to 43 off the first 45 balls she faced; and 40 of those runs were scored in boundaries. She took advantage of anything full and on the pads, and South Africa offered plenty of both. Then, when South Africa tightened up, she changed gears and showed the patience of a much more experienced long-format player. It took her 25 deliveries of watching and waiting to get to fifty, but then only 54 more to reach 100. By that time, she was finding scoring areas on the off-side as easily as she had earlier found them on the leg-side and her straight six off Tumi Sekhukhune, to get into the 90s, will be a shot to find the image of and frame.
She paced her innings so well that, when Maia brought up her hundred, off 124 balls, she held the record for the fastest Test century scored by an England player. Less than an hour later, she had been overtaken by Nat Sciver-Brunt, who took just 96 balls to score the quickest hundred in all women's Tests and Maia did not mind at all. "She's a special player. I'm just so happy for her as well because she's had a tough time and she's had a lot going on," she said. "I'm really proud of her as well. She's just another level."
Maia has singled out Sciver-Brunt as the player she wants to emulate and, with a first Test century against South Africa, she has already done just that. She's singled out her father as the person she most wants to make proud. However, she also did allow for a small moment of singling out herself and what this means to her, outside of being a dreamer or a daughter.
"It's the pinnacle,' she said. "To make my debut and to get a hundred, is top of the charts, really."