Quinton’s talent flowers for Proteas
Young gun is the potential heir to Kallis crown
QUINTON de Kock had faced eight balls when Anwar Ali loped towards him at a wet Wanderers onWednesday night. His eyes were level. His bat was poised like a trigger waiting to be squeezed. He was ready.
Anwar delivered too full and too wide of off-stump. Other batsmen might have dabbed to third man, or slashed past backward point.
Not De Kock. With little more than a finely controlled shift of his weight around some unseen fulcrum, followed by a sleight of wrist, he rerouted the ball’s destination. Instead of hurtling towards a place between third man and backward point, it was sent skidding along the ground to the midwicket boundary.
A Joburg boykie who won’t turn 21 until December 17 had no right to play that stroke. But De Kock played it with aplomb.
Then, having whipped Junaid Khan for four through midwicket off the front foot and cut him viciously past point for another in the same over, De Kock conjured the least pretty and the most impressive of boundaries.
He advanced down the pitch early enough for Junaid to see him coming, take the speed off the ball, and toss it full and at leg stump. De Kock found a way to change the line of his attack, get his legs out of the way, and put enough bat squarely on the ball to thread a gap of no more than two metres between the bowler and a fielder.
As memorable as each of those shots was, De Kock would have been grumpy as he played at least one of them.
“People say I have a lot of talent,” he said later that night. “Sometimes I hate it because I have too many options.”
Like talented tyros everywhere, he didn’t enjoy being reined in: “I have settled down, but after every over I get told by ‘Hash’ [Hashim Amla] or whoever to keep my head.”
These sentences will leap off
How the most accomplished SA player of this generation gets on with the man who could replace him is a fascinating subplot
the page as evidence of ego. They are not. They are the feelings of a young man not yet numbed to mumbling nothingness into the media headlights. He spoke not with anger or arrogance, but with a calm honesty.
Long may De Kock retain that innocence off the field. On the field, scraping together 70 runs in his first six innings for SA’s T20 team disabused him of the notion, if he ever held it, that cricket owed him success.
“I went to some of the older men — [Lions teammate] Neil Mac [McKenzie] and ‘Hash’ — and they told me that if you have the talent it’s all about hard work,” De Kock said.
He will encounter another old man with much to teach him at Newlands today, where Jacques Kallis will play a one-day international for the first time since February last year when SA take on Pakistan.
How the most accomplished SA player of this generation gets on with the man who could, in that sense, replace him is a fascinating subplot to the drama.
It will help De Kock understand that the pond was bigger than he thought.
“Remember that everywhere and at every level that Quinton has played, he has been a big player,” Lions coach Geoff Toyana said.
“Cricket is about instinct and we as coaches can’t take that away as players. When Dale Steyn is running in at you, you sometimes forget technique and instinct takes over.”
De Kock has indeed made most of his way in the world by leaning on spark and spunk. But there is more to the game than that.
“Two or three years ago he was a shy little kid who couldn’t open his mouth,” Toyana said. “Now you forget that he’s only 20.”
Best De Kock doesn’t forget that. At least, not until December 17.