A video of South African cricketer Temba Bavuma is being shared on social media, claiming that he responded to Indian cricketer Jasprit Bumrah’s remark about his height during a test match between the two teams at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, on 14 November.
What does he purportedly say?: In the video, Bavuma can be heard responding to a query about people teasing him about his height, saying,
“Call me pocket-sized. Call me short. Call me John the Don, whatever you want, I don’t care. While you’re busy giving names for me, I’m out here making history. This so called bauna [dwarf] is the one scoring runs, leading teams, and making headlines. Bumrah, you named me bauna and people says ‘bauna hi devta hai’ [The dwarf is the king.] So Lord Bavuma, is the God.”
Is it true?: No, there is no evidence to support the claim that Bavuma responded to the remarks.
Moreover, we were able to establish the visuals of Bavuma speaking date back to at least 2023 and do not show him speaking after the recent issue.
How do we know?: We analysed the claim from multiple angles to verify the truth behind the viral video.
News and official sources: First, we ran a keyword search to check whether the Proteas cricketer had issued a statement or even responded to Bumrah’s remark, but did not find any credible or official sources sharing this information.
Neither Cricbuzz nor ESPNCricInfo, which usually carry visuals of most interviews and matches, had this video of Bavuma's response.
Similarly, we did not find any such statements on Cricket South Africa's website or social media accounts.
On BCCI's website, we saw that players spoke to the media against a different backdrop than the one seen in the claim.
Details in the video: We also noticed that throughout the video, the words we could hear did not match the way Bavuma's mouth moved, indicating that an audio track was laid over the video track.
In the video, we noticed that Bavuma’s jersey showed a company called ‘Castore’ as its sponsor, with a logo resembling wings.
The jersey also showed two green lines running down its sides.
However, the jersey that the team is wearing during its current test series, as seen in photos shared by the team’s official Instagram account, does not match the one seen in the claim.
Moreover, we found that Castore had sponsored the team between September 2021 and 5 September 2023, when the team switched to Lotto Sports.
The team’s current jersey, which is white with green logos, does not feature the stripes seen in the claim.
Macron Sports became the sponsor of the Proteas team since February 2025 and their logo is featured on the team’s jersey.
Is it AI?: We submitted the video to the Misinformation Combat Alliance’s (MCA) Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU), who ran the video through several AI-generated content detection tools.
Apart from the first ten seconds of the clip, Hive's Moderation's AI audio classifier said that the audio was "not AI-generated."
Their deepfake detector, too, found no signs for AI in the visuals.
However, Hiya's Audio Intelligence tool said that the audio "seems generated or modified by AI."
Swiss deep-tech company Aurigin.ai's tool was 57 percent sure that the audio was AI-generated.
The Quint has reached out to Bavuma's team and the SA cricket board and will update the story once we have a response.
Conclusion: The video of Temba Bavuma talking about Bumrah's remarks is an altered video.
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