De Kock will remember MSL ton

CENTURION is a ground Quinton de Kock knows intimately and has great affinity for and he utilised that knowledge and love, to produce what he described as one of his “best knocks,”of his career on Saturday night.

The Cape Town Blitz had no right winning their match against the Tshwane Spartans after being 101/8 in the 14th over of their innings, let alone with a bonus point. That they did was solely down to De Kock who produced one of the great T20 innings’ that South Africa has witnessed.

“The wicket played quite nicely and I just tried to take advantage of that. This hundred will be remembered for a long time in my career,” he said.

De Kock was dismissed in the 19th over of the Blitz innings for 108, the second century in the Mzansi Super League just 24 hours after Reeza Hendricks had registered the first for the Jozi Stars at the Wanderers.

It was a remarkable performance by De Kock who bore witness to a catastrophic collapse by his teammates which saw the Blitz slump from 83/0 to 101/8 in the space of 25 balls. There looked to be no coming back, but De Kock unleashed a calculated assault, relying on his terrific hand-eye coordination to manipulate the ball between fielders and in some cases over them to drag the Blitz back into the game.

He shared a 57-run partnership for the ninth wicket with Malusi Siboto, who scored just two runs in that stand and faced just nine balls, to illustrate just how superbly De Kock controlled that portion of the match.

“I told Malusi that we needed to box clever here to post a decent score, we both realised that I needed to take most of the strike,” De Kock said.

“I played a lot of cricket here at Centurion which helps. I was dwelling on the past training sessions I’ve had here with the Titans and Proteas (to help me),” De Kock added.