Indian cricket fans will remember him for a lot of reasons. He smashed three hundreds against MS Dhoni’s team in a three-match ODI series in South Africa in 2013. He has been a standout performer in the Indian Premier League (IPL). And he is hitting hundreds for fun in a World Cup in India.
Quinton de Kock would not be the first choice in an all-time fantasy ODI XI. There are illustrious peers and predecessors. Forget Dhoni, he is not mentioned in the same breath as Adam Gilchrist and Kumar Sangakkara when it comes to wicketkeeper-batters in this format. Utility, versatility, consistency and contribution to the team’s cause are factors that are considered. And, of course, the end result. How did your display influence the performance of your team? Not much really, right?
Talk about the South African challenge at this World Cup, and their past disappointments in the competition, and there has been a marked difference. It lies in the ridiculous boisterousness of their batting. This is some upsurge. They go out there, hit you out of the park most of the time and rattle up these flamboyant totals above 300, game after game. A cornerstone of this enterprise is De Kock. A pity that he is opting for voluntary retirement after the tournament.
There is something very assuring about him if you are part of his team. He is not about pyrotechnics by the popular perception of the term. He will not make it look violent. There will be little use of brute power or anything that jars the eye. Yet, there will be these crystal-clear shots of perfection with telling effect. The range is vast, from behind square on the offside to behind square on the leg. No obvious reference to 360 degrees, but here is that same effect.
He is just short of 31 and he has 21 ODI centuries. That’s stuff for statisticians to dig over. Not many players have so many three-figure scores in 152 games, and that too at a strike rate of over 96. Not a poster boy, De Kock has been a massive force against both types of bowling in varying conditions. If he clicks, mostly, it’s game over. Eighteen of his centuries have come in a winning cause. South Africa have won 95 of the matches he has played.
These, as we all know, are dry stats. They do not convey the impact the player from Johannesburg has made. In Pune against New Zealand, he was on 22 off 39 balls at the end of the power play. Fifty came off 62 balls, and he then took just 22 balls to get from 63 to 100 against a fairly handy attack. Trent Boult had previously dominated him, and Mitchell Santner was a potential trouble-maker.
De Kock unfurled his repertoire in this game. He was a man possessed. Against Bangladesh, when he made 174, his go-to shot was the pull. Here, though he played a reverse lap and a couple of other cute deflections, most of the damage was done hitting straight down the ground. No risk, just clean straight hitting. The pitch might have helped. There was no way to overlook the quality of execution in that knock of 114 off 116 balls.
When it comes to World Cups and centuries, Rohit Sharma and Sangakkara are the without-doubt mentions. In De Kock, this competition has found another one. Four centuries in seven matches. At least three more games to play, for sure. He is a serious threat to Rohit’s benchmark of five. India would be an appropriate place for him if gets to that famous fifth.