'This, without doubt, is the one innings that I will remember for the rest of my life' — Rabada

A half-finished beer in one hand. A big smile on his face and a lifetime’s worth of memories made, Kagiso Rabada still cut a cool figure, having just produced the innings of his life. 

“It’s a blur,” he remarked about the final hour of a ludicrous Test match in which he’d played a decisive hand — with his bat. 

“There was a lot of pressure on today, this, without doubt, is the one innings that I will remember for the rest of my life,” he said. 

It started amid a whirlwind, stirred up by a relentless Mohammad Abbas, who had sent the Proteas crashing in an inexplicable hour leading up to lunch. Rabada’s first job was to prevent him taking a hat-trick. 

He duly blocked that delivery. The second ball he faced, he crashed over point for four — a tone had been set. At the other end, Marco Jansen, nervous at the best of times, just wanted to know what Rabada’s game plan was going to be.

“When I came in, I said to him that I was going to look to be positive. Without any hesitation he said ‘OK.’ He had his own gameplan, his main thing was one ball at a time, play it on its merit, and that’s what he did. He was a bit more orthodox, I was unorthodox, but it worked out.”

There was another thing Rabada was clear about. “I just kept thinking, I’m not going to leave it to Patto.”

Judging by how pale Dane Paterson looked every time the TV cameras found him, he probably shared that sentiment. 

Unorthodox or not, it was mighty effective, drawing comfort from the encouragement offered at lunch, when sharing a few puffs with head coach Shukri Conrad. “Whatever they were going to do, they had to back themselves from the start. I said ‘if you are going to go, then go balls to the wall, even if you get close, just continue with what you set out to do,” said Conrad. 

Rabada admitted he was fighting the twin voices in his head. “The one says: ‘you are not going to do this.’ The other one has to overpower it.”

Luckily the second one was triumphant. A series of muscular blows brought the required total down from 32 at lunch, to 12, with Rabada on strike against Khurram Shazhad. 

Given the way he was playing, attempting a pair of sixes was an inevitable strategy. He struck two fours instead — the first a murderous blow straight down the ground, the second one of those stylish cover drives. 

Before all that there’d been the lavish cut off Naseem Shah. “There were little visions of Brian Charles (Lara) there, at times,” Conrad laughed. 

“I just thought, ‘give me a cut, give me a cut.’ I was setting up for the cut and he gave me a cut, the ball sat up nicely and I connected it,” Rabada said of a stroke, that was completed with Lara-like flair, the front leg up in the air, and a flourish of the bat, that had the Gray-Nicholls stickers flashing in the sunshine. 

When did he think the match was won? “When we needed two to win.” 

“The main thing I was thinking about was to continue to stay positive. If I went into my shell and got out doing that, then I was going to be more upset. If I went out being positive I would have accepted that,” said Rabada.

That method worked. Jansen, knocked off the winning runs, against an understandably tired Abbas. A deflection to third man. Rabada thrust his arms in the air, dropped both his bat and his helmet, furiously pumped his fists and hugged his teammate. 

In the home dressing room, there was pandemonium, the tears flowed from the coach and the captain. Temba Bavuma admitted afterwards, he had no words for his champion fast bowler and now match winning batter. “I just jumped on him.”

Before the World Test Championship final, which Rabada helped to secure, he said he was now looking forward to the second Test at Newlands. “The atmosphere there is going to be electric. I’m already looking forward to it.” 

But even before then, there are more beers to be drunk, perhaps a quiet smoke — this one more celebratory than the ‘ease the tension puff’ at lunchtime.