De Kock's Zone
Quinton de Kock is playing his best ODI World Cup cricket
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” - Bruce Lee
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Kabir Ali could only watch as Quinton de Kock smashed the ball back over his head and over the sight screen. It was the first ball he faced, yet de Kock behaved as if he had been in the middle for half the innings and knew the length Ali intended to bowl before the Englishman got into his delivery stride. When he walked down the pitch to meet the delivery, 16-year-old de Kock knew where he wanted to hit the ball.
It’s the de Kock sixth sense. In 2016, the Proteas players were gathered around a TV watching footage of Nathan Lyon as part of their preparation for the Test series against Australia. "Next time I play him I'm going to hit him backward of square,” de Kock spoke up, breaking the silence. His comment wasn’t directed to anyone in particular, de Kock was simply thinking out loud. He had just had an epiphany.
De Kock’s plan worked. Over the next two Tests, de Kock dispatched Lyon to backward of square a few times and scored 97 runs from 115 balls against Lyon without once being dismissed by him. All it had taken was a video of the Australian offspinner bowling a few deliveries for something to click in his head. "I back myself to know about the game. I don't know what it is. I find it hard to explain. If I'm in the right space I can see what will happen before it does but there is no formula for how I do that. I couldn't teach anyone how to do it," said de Kock in 2019.
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In the 1970s, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi introduced the idea of the flow state, a state where a player is fully immersed in their game. Everything else ceases to matter. It is a brief moment during which they feel invincible. The laws of space and physics are suspended. Time becomes elastic. The extraordinary becomes ordinary. This is the zone.
When de Kock is in the zone, he seems to possess a preternatural ability to see things about cricket that other people cannot. That is what made him a prodigious star as a teen and one of South Africa’s best batters of his generation as an adult. His only problem was that he seemed unable to unlock the zone at ODI World Cups. It has taken him a while to score his first 50-over World Cup century.
De Kock scored his first 100 in his ninth ODI innings and had six of them under his belt when he went to his first ODI World Cup where his top score was an unbeaten 78. In the next World Cup cycle, he scored another seven centuries, but could only manage an average 68 as his top score at the 2019 edition. It was a strange situation. Here was a player who scored centuries, home and away, against the best attacks in the world, but didn’t have an ODI World Cup century.
For context, coming into the 2023 ODI World Cup, de Kock had the highest strike rate among all openers in South African ODI cricket and had the second-highest strike rate among South African batters with 5,000 or more runs. With that strike rate, it's easy to think of him as a weekend slogger or PowerPlay bully. No. De Kock also had the fifth-best ODI average for South African batters with at least 3,500 runs to their name and was the joint fourth for the most ODI centuries for South Africa.
To a distant observer, it looked like de Kock put himself under pressure to perform at the 50-over World Cup. Instead of relying on his instincts, he became his own stumbling block by trying too hard. There were moments where he played shots that looked like he was trying to force the issue. At one point he developed an obsession with the scoop and tried to use it as a get-out-of-jail shot when he felt bogged down when he could have played to his strengths.
So, maybe as he has grown older, has matured and lets the game come to him. Against Australia, he trotted out the scoop after he had sent Australian fielders in chase of leather, but it was after he had shown his range. He is at his best when he plays square of the wicket, imperious with his cover drive, glorious when he plays the swivel-pull through midwicket, unmatched when he picks up the ball through the leg side.
14 years after dispatching Kabir Ali over the sight screen in his debut 50-over match, de Kock showed he still had his preternatural ability. He got into position just as Pat Cummins was about to release the ball, it was as if he knew where the Australian wanted to put the ball. Quinton de Kock had no intention to keep the ball down and whacked it over deep mid-wicket for six to bring up his second consecutive century in ODI World Cups. In the blink of an eye, he had gone from zero to two 100s.
De Kock is only two innings into his third and last ODI World Cup campaign, and already, he is having his best tournament ever. He has finally unlocked the zone at the 50-over showpiece. He flows like water.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS