“I’d rather win the World Cup and score no runs than score all the runs and not win the World Cup.” – Quinton de Kock
Telford Vice / Kolkata
QUINTON de Kock looked like a player who wasn’t sure where his next run would come from. If you didn’t know better you might have thought the man staring into the camera from a Kolkata hotel room on Friday was in the worst form of his life.
He gave the impression of someone who hadn’t slept for days because he was worried about why he kept getting out. That, technically, is correct — De Kock has indeed been getting out at the World Cup; for scores of 100, 109, 20, 4, 174, 24 and 114.
Only Rohit Sharma has made more hundreds in a single edition of the tournament, five in 2019. The only other player who has managed four is Kumar Sangakkara, in 2015. After 33 games De Kock is this World Cup’s leading runscorer with 545. His 77.85 puts him fourth in the averages. His 174 against Bangladesh last Tuesday at the same Wankhede where India dismissed Sri Lanka for 55 on Thursday is the tournament’s highest score. Only Sharma and David Warner have hit more sixes than De Kock’s 18.
So why were his eyes somewhere else? Why was his face blank, his posture limp? Could it be De Kock was worried about where his next failure might come from? And hoping hard it wouldn’t be against India at Eden Gardens on Sunday? Or in the semifinals? Or — be still South Africans’ beating heart — the final?
None of the above, stalwarts of De Kock’s press conferences over the years would be able to say. The truth of it is that when he is talking to the gathered media, unlike when he is on the field or, presumably, when he is fishing, he doesn’t seem fully conscious. It is, plainly, something he has no interest in doing. He is utterly, irreconcilably, irretrievably bored with reporters’ questions. And so he offers a semblance of himself and counts down the minutes to when it is all over.
That would help explain why he did not come to a press conference after scoring his 174 — reporters were told he was on doctor’s orders as he had been drained by his innings — nor after he made 114 against New Zealand in Pune on Wednesday, when no explanation was offered. This is not a complaint: he was under no compunction to put up with the likes of us.
De Kock’s job is to play cricket, which he does better than most people on this earth. It is not to talk to reporters. Some players are less averse to doing so and a few of them are even good at it. But those reporters who have been around long enough will know De Kock is in exalted company: Jacques Kallis, too, used to look at us with empty eyes and say not at all much.
Famously, Kallis retired from Test cricket on Christmas Day in 2013. Or less than 24 hours before the start of a Test against India at Kingsmead. Just as famously, De Kock also clocked out of the longest format in the throes of a series against India, in December 2012. But he has given us an entire World Cup to get used to the idea of him not playing ODIs anymore. So, given his current glut of runs, has he been moved to reconsider?
“I’m set on my decision,” De Kock said. “It’s the end of my 50-over career. There have been one or two words said to me about it, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
Really? Even though he is at the top of his game? “At this point I don’t foresee it happening. But, you never know. Strange things happen in life. It could be a possibility but I don’t think so. There’s some good youngsters coming through anyway who will probably take my place as soon as I leave, and they will have to deal with national duties. That’s that.”
It’s a telling choice of words: “… they will have to deal with national duties”. De Kock, it would seem, has no truck with notions of representation. Too much lip service is paid to too many causes — national and otherwise — in sport. But De Kock plays cricket for the sake of himself, his family — financially — and his teammates. End of. Does he even enjoy it? That’s difficult to say.
For instance, drawing level in World Cup hundreds with another notable left-handed wicketkeeper-batter didn’t raise his pulse: “I always enjoyed ‘Sanga’ growing up and playing with him, and he is one of my good friends now. But I wouldn’t say I wanted to be like him. I want to be like myself. And that’s pretty much it on that topic.”
De Kock is as unvarnished a professional as it is possible to find, and he is to be commended for his refusal to indulge the high-brow nonsense that he and his peers have an obligation to be something more. They do not. De Kock’s balking at taking a knee during the 2021 T20 World Cup to support the cause for social justice, which angered many justifiably, could be couched in this context. It was the wrong thing to do in terms of the bigger picture. But De Kock often doesn’t see the bigger picture, not least because of the privilege of not having to see it from inside the bubble of professional sport. All he sees is the ball. And he hits it. Hard and far. That level of focus, while fraught with wider danger, helps secure success.
Just more than a month from his 31st birthday, and with T20Is his only remaining commitment to South Africa after this World Cup, De Kock has several years left to hit hard the ball and far in T20 leagues to never have to work a day in his life after he plays his last match for the Azerbaijan Anacondas, or whoever.
But, for now, that unshakeable focus is fixed on one thing only. And it isn’t another century or three. “I’d rather win the World Cup and score no runs than score all the runs and not win the World Cup,” De Kock said.
He has been a compelling factor in South Africa’s six victories in seven matches, which has led to rising and increasingly anxious hopes among their supporters that, this time, they can go where they have never been before: to the final and, perhaps, the title. De Kock is playing in his seventh World Cup in both white-ball formats, the first six of which have ended in various stages of catastrophe for the South Africans. What has made this campaign different so far?
“I’m not too sure.” It’s perhaps De Kock’s most frequently used phrase. “We are just playing really good cricket at the moment.” That’s another. “We are not trying to overthink things. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel. We are just trying to do the simple things really well. That’s the key to why we’ve been successful.”
As for Sunday’s match against India in Kolkata, a contest in front of one of the game’s great crowds between the two best teams in the tournament, sides laden with talent, skill and confidence who have won 13 of the 14 games they have played …
“It’s just another game of cricket, I guess,” he said, but showed the good sense to soften that statement: “Every game now, counting down to my last couple, is special. I’ve played at Eden Gardens quite a bit and playing India in India is quite a spectacle. They would have every single fan in India at that game if they could and they are going to be a handful. That’s one of the more crazy things about our fixture …” Enough with the varnish: “ … but otherwise it’s just another game of cricket.”
Maybe, for Quinton de Kock, it really is.
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