De Kock wants it all for Proteas

You can’t accuse Quinton de Kock of not setting his sights high enough in the afterglow of SA winning the first two games in their one-day series in Sri Lanka.

“It was the mission to go 2-0 up and hopefully we’ll go to 3-0 and win the series in a great way‚” De Kock said after SA won by four wickets in Dambulla on Wednesday.

“And then hopefully we’ll win the last two after that; that’s what we’re pushing for.”

Forrest Gump couldn’t have said it better himself: we’ll take 5-0‚ thank you.

There’s a lot of cricket to be played before that becomes a serious possibility‚ starting with the next game of the rubber in Kandy on Sunday.

But to be 2-0 up after they were comprehensively beaten in both Tests, represent an impressive recovery by the visitors.

Thirty-seven of the 40 wickets South Africa lost in the Tests fell to spin‚ along with seven of the 11 that have gone down during the ODIs.

But, the South Africans have learnt their lesson well enough not to lose those other nine wickets. “It was quite difficult to play spin [in the Test series] especially when the wickets have been given the chance to deteriorate over the last couple of days‚” said De Kock.

“We practised hard during the Test series to deal with the spin so it’s just nice for me and the team to finally play spin properly.”

Opener De Kock scored 87 on Wednesday to snap at seven his streak of Test and one-day innings in which he hadn’t reached 50. —