Quinton de Kock finished the night with a career-best 115, South Africa’s highest individual score in men’s T20 internationals, yet the left-hander walked off still grumbling about his own forgetfulness. Half an hour before the team coach left the hotel for Centurion he realised, with a jolt, that his kit bag was missing one rather important item: his bats.
“I felt a bit stupid when I noticed earlier,” he admitted after South Africa overhauled West Indies’ 221 for 7 to win the second T20I and seal the series. “I’ve got some new bags over the last year, so I was going through all bits and bobs, and I just went blank. I don’t know, I forgot. I went a bit white when I realised I had to make one or two phone calls half-an-hour before the bus was leaving [to try and get them back].”
The forgotten sticks were still on the coast, a two-hour flight away, so de Kock went shopping in the dressing-room.
“Before I got into the change room, I went looking around between [Dewald] Brevi[s] and Ricks [Ryan Rickelton] and I just pulled one out of Brevi’s bag,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m just going to use this one today’. Brevi said, ‘It’s fine, it’s a good bat for you because it’s a left-handed bat’. And I was like, ‘Wow! Youngsters these days!’”
Bats are not produced for left- or right-handers in the same way as golf clubs, and Brevis is right-handed anyway, but de Kock let the teenager have his moment. “He’s adamant about it,” he laughed. “And it did its service tonight.”
Service indeed: six fours and ten sixes later, South Africa were cruising. De Kock now tops his country’s T20 run-scoring list, while his partnership of 162 with Rickelton left the tourists’ attack short of ideas on a placid deck at SuperSport Park.
If you thought he might hang on to the magic wand, think again. “If my bats come before the next game, I will be using my own bats so no, that bat is going back to Brevis,” he clarified. “To be honest, I didn’t really enjoy it. The weight was out of place for me. It’s for youngsters who swing hard. So I won’t be having it back at any time.”
Brevis used his remaining bats for a brief cameo at No. 4 before holing out for four. By then the chase was effectively done; Rickelton (78*) and Jason Smith knocked off the final runs with two overs in hand. It was South Africa’s third-highest pursuit at the ground, behind their own 259 and 226, both also against West Indies.
“We’ve done it a couple of times on this ground, so that’s the confidence that you have, knowing that most totals on a good wicket do get chased down,” de Kock explained. “It’s just a matter of applying yourself and going through the process. That was pretty much it. Over the years of doing it here, I specifically just had the confidence of just going about our business.”
The wicket, in truth, offered little for the bowlers. Alzarri Joseph found a smidge of extra bounce early on, Akeal Hosein turned the odd ball, but once de Kock got his bearings the result felt inevitable. “The wicket was very good and we played accordingly. It was really nice,” he said.
Head coach Rob Walter praised de Kock’s composure, noting the way he shifted gears after a watchful first over. “Quinny settles quickly,” Walter said. “You’d never guess he was using someone else’s bat. There’s a calmness about his decision-making that rubs off on the group.”
Former Proteas opener Herschelle Gibbs, working on television, offered a simple verdict: “When he sees length, he goes. It doesn’t matter what label the willow carries.”
West Indies captain Rovman Powell gave credit but lamented missed chances. “We were 15 short and dropped de Kock twice,” he said. “At this level you get punished.”
For de Kock, the focus already shifts to the final match in Johannesburg, and to picking up his own gear from the courier. He chuckled when asked if a replacement delivery had been confirmed. “Hopefully it lands before I bat again,” he said, before adding, almost under his breath, “I’m one of those guys that prefer really working hard on hard batting wickets, working hard from being really cleve…”
The sentence trailed off, much like his evening began – slightly untidy, entirely human – but the scoreboard showed 115, and South Africa led the series. That, ultimately, was the only detail that truly mattered.
