LUKE ALFRED | ‘KG’ and Temba join the dots all the way back to Newlands

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Kagiso Rabada will come full circle when he plays in his 75th Test at Newlands against Australia on Tuesday. It was there that he made his home debut in 2016 (he had already played three away Tests in India), though it was pedestrian as far as first Tests go.

Rabada didn’t play in the opening Test of the 2015/16 series against England — lost at Kingsmead by 241 runs — but as a result of injuring his shoulder at Durban, Dale Steyn was never going to play at Newlands in the second. Kyle Abbott failed a late fitness test and Rabada was shoe-horned in to bolster an experimental bowling attack led by Morné Morkel and also featuring debutant Chris Morris.

On a wicket custom-made for batting, England jollied along to 629/6 (Ben Stokes 258, Jonny Bairstow 150 not out) at five runs to the over. Rabada’s numbers aren’t anything he’s going to share with his grandchildren — 3/175 in fewer than 30 overs in a high-scoring draw.

It says a great deal for Rabada’s willingness to learn that in the first innings of his very next Test — at the Wanderers, his home ground — he took his first five-fer. South Africa lost, cleaned up by flame-throwing Stuart Broad on the Sunday afternoon, but Rabada took the wickets of Alex Hales, Ben Compton, Joe Root, Bairstow and Broad. Three for 175 was immediately superseded by 5/78. In the space of days, he’d converted a false positive into something far more compelling.

It was an awkward time in which to make your home debut that season because indecision hovered over the Proteas like an umpire’s jittery finger. Graeme Smith, Vernon Philander and Jacques Kallis had long gone. AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla both captained the side. De Villiers, Quinton de Kock and Dane Vilas all kept wicket at one time or another. Stiaan van Zyl opened the batting — but only some of the time. Hardus Viljoen and Stephen Cook played one Test each, Dane Piedt three.

The South Africans, coached by Russell Domingo, didn’t know who they were or where they were going. They went nowhere as a result, losing the series 1-2 to a good England side who had won the Ashes 3-2 at home six months before.

Rabada, as is his wont, seemed to crest through all of this like a tea clipper to China. Part of his charm as a cricketer is that he gives the impression of being largely unaffected by things going on around him. This, of course, isn’t true, it just seems so, but it is still one of Rabada’s great strengths that he appears to be the proverbial boy in a bubble.

This is what makes the rare occasions when he comes out of it, such as his cheeky signal to the Aussie dressing room at St George’s that they were following on, all the more welcome and amusing. With 346 Test wickets (average 21.97) to his name, “KG” has pretty much everyone’s number. Going into the deciding Test of the series that starts on the strangest days imaginable (a Tuesday?), you rather feel he has this Aussie side’s number more than most.

Once was the time when his skipper, Temba Bavuma, didn’t have the numbers. Bavuma scored what was, for a long time, his one and only Test century (102 not out) in Rabada’s debut home Test at Newlands in 2016, and it took another seven years and two months for him to reach a second. This was his 171 against the West Indies at the Wanderers in March 2023, and he’s subsequently scored hundreds against Sri Lanka (113, Kingsmead, November 2024), Pakistan (106, Newlands, January 2025) and, of course, Australia (179, St George’s, October 2026).

There’s a symmetry to Bavuma and Rabada playing together at Newlands this week. Both of them, you could say, have come full circle. Knowing this, the two of them will be only too happy — ahem — to round things off with a win against an Australian side in significant disarray.

Business Day