Two or three months ago, the 2019 World Cup looked set to be a two-horse race, but in the last few weeks the veil of superiority covering England and India has slipped.
That little crack will have stoked that little fire in the hearts of Proteas fans desperate for 2019 to be their year.
There is one man whose return to form may yet herald a very real push for the World Cup trophy.
Having endured a lean year in ODI cricket in 2018, when he posted the lowest run tally for a calendar year in his career to date, Quinton de Kock has rediscovered his destructive best.
De Kock failed to post a century in 2018, but broke his long run without a ton on a tricky surface at Kingsmead against Sri Lanka on 10 March. 2018 was also a year that saw De Kock play the least ODI cricket of his career so far. Injuries and workload management saw him limited to 10 matches in the format; de Kock played 16 or more matches every year since his ODI debut in 2013.
The opener visibly struggled to strike the ball with his usual fluency, but a string of dominant displays in the Mzansi Super League marked an upturn in form for the explosive left-hander.
If you subscribe to the sentiment that players need to ‘peak at the right time’, de Kock’s current upward curve should excite you. If he can sustain his current purple patch through the Indian Premier League, he will be well placed to be as influential for the Proteas as Shikhar Dhawan is for India. Dhawan and de Kock are both players who have the ability to put their teams decisively on the front foot, if not in charge of a contest.
Australia have struggled to find a world-class opener and that struggle has coincided with a downward turn in their ODI record, while in the Caribbean Chris Gayle demonstrated emphatically the value a dominant opening batsman can bring to even the most rag-tag group.
England enjoy an embarrassment of riches when it comes to dominant batsmen, but the World Cup could just come down to who hits their straps at the right time and rides that wave to the cup. De Kock certainly has the ability to win ODI matches, but he endured a difficult World Cup in 2015 – and will be eager to demonstrate that he can live up to his potential on the big stage.
The battle between new-ball bowlers and openers at the 2019 World Cup could prove critical, as the early phases of the game are when the Dukes ball will do the most, but it is also a period often earmarked for a batting assault.
Teams will all be looking for ‘daddy’ centuries from their opener,s something de Kock has shown he can deliver. The only question will be whether he can match the likes of Gayle, Rohit Sharma, Dhawan, Jason Roy and returning arch-nemesis David Warner.
Written by @JonhenryWilson
