Quinny: I’m not here to be a superhero

Whether he’s playing in a domestic franchise final in Joburg, an IPL final in front of teeming masses in India, or a World Cup opener against the hosts in London, Quinton de Kock remains the same unfazed batting genius.

With the retirement of AB de Villiers, De Kock is now the most feared South African batsman, a player of instinctive talent capable of sublime, miraculous strokeplay.

But being an instinctive player does have its drawbacks and De Kock began his 2019 World Cup campaign with a fluent 68 off 74 balls but unfortunately did not get the job done as he was out in the 23^rd over.

The manner of his dismissal, flicking a delivery on his pads from Liam Plunkett straight to deep backward square-leg, also irked him.

“I didn’t come here to be a superhero, we’ve spoken about that as a team that we’re just here for everybody to do their job. We would all like to be AB, but there’s only one guy going around who can play like that at the moment, and he’s playing for England [Jos Buttler]. So we just want to play as good cricket as we can. What did help me was that I forgot how much time there is in 50-over cricket, after the IPL final was such a rush.

“I didn’t play too badly, but the way I got out was obviously frustrating and I lost my wicket at the wrong time. If myself and Rassie van der Dussen could have batted for a few more overs together then I think we would have done quite well. In the past I have had a lot of dismissals like that, it just comes out of nowhere, it’s just reflexes but I’m trying to work on it. One day you get out playing that shot, the next day you’ll hit it for six,” De Kock said after South Africa’s loss to England in the World Cup opener at The Oval.

De Kock was not the only South African batsman to be caught on the boundary; poor Andile Phehlukwayo had scored 24 when he really connected with a slog-sweep off leg-spinner Adil Rashid, but Ben Stokes somehow managed to intercept the ball with an incredible catch.

“Andile was unlucky, that was a decent catch,” De Kock said with typical understatement.

“We thought chasing 312 was about par and that the England team were probably more nervous than us. It wasn’t a bad score to chase especially after England had 112 for three after the first 20 overs and they can easily make 350. The bowlers pulled it back nicely, we never let it get away from us in the field, we always had a grip on the game.

“So we backed ourselves to chase that, but our start didn’t give us the best chance. The worst thing about Hashim Amla having to retire hurt was that it was like losing a wicket. He had batted well in the two warm-ups, so that was one down and then we were like 40 for three in the powerplay after losing Aiden Markram and Faf du Plessis as well. So we weren’t in a good place after early wickets,” De Kock said.

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