South Africa’s Ryan Rickelton celebrates after scoring century during the ICC Champions Trophy cricket match between Afghanistan and South Africa, in Karachi, Pakistan Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (AP Photo)
A weightlifting national champion at school, Ryan Rickelton muscled South Africa to a spirit-soaring scything of Afghanistan in Karachi. A resourceful, well-grooved unit, the Proteas had weirdly stumbled onto a lean patch this year in this format, winless until Friday, and consequently not counted among the outright favourites. But when the whistles of big-ticket tournaments buzz their ears, they inevitably turn up.
So they did, to the lively cheers of scattered locals, though eventually drowned out in the acoustics of the Afghanistan supporters. Agonisingly for them, South Africa laid bare Afghan vulnerabilities, in a format in which they are work in progress. From cracking the 50-over temperament to scientifically plotting a steep chase and taking wickets in the middle-overs, there are holes that impede their evolution from party-spoilers to knockout hopefuls, as they stuttered to 208 all out, chasing South Africa’s 315 for 8. Apart from Rahmat Shah’s plucky 90, they had few takeaways from the game.
Conversely, South Africa are a well-worn side, a last-four guarantee in most global tournaments. Every time they seem to experience a talent crunch, someone invariably springs. The shoes of Quinton de Kock are enormous too but Rickelton has seamlessly slipped into them. Their background is similar—multi-sports taste and excellence, penchant for outdoor life and supportive sports-mad families. The resemblance pretzels are further bonded by their southpaw savagery.
But he is a different batsman in constitution, style and methods. De Kock was lean and tall; Rickelton stockier and muscular. De Kock fetishised the region behind the square, using his powerful wrists to flay the ball fine; not that he was daft at hitting down the ground or shovelling through midwicket. Rickelton is schooled more in the Graeme Smith tradition of batting. He is not so much of wrists, as he is about quick hands, biffed strokes and inscrutable temperament. He nails the pull as brutally as most batsmen, but he prefers hitting down the ground.
A gorgeous off-drive, so svelte that you wonder how he controlled his muscles to not impart too much power, tee’d him off. But Fazalhaq Farooqi felt the sting of his brute force when Rickelton cut him for successive fours. When the balls were full at the start, he struggled to gauge the inherent sluggishness of the pitch and was too early into his shots. The lack of pace of Afghanistan seamers rebelled with his turbocharged impulses. But the short-balls liberated him and punctured the strangling tactics of Afghanistan.
When Mohammad Nabi ejected Tony de Zorzi and boundaries trickled, he relied on nudges and glides to motor along. His boundary-hitting prowess precedes him, but he is also a canny accumulator. Quick and a sharp judge of singles, he ran 66 of his 103 runs. He expertly nullified Rashid Khan, his franchise friend in South Africa T20, he smothered the spin with decisive hands. The strike rate hovered at 90 or thereabouts, even as Temba Bavuma, his partner in the 129-run second-wicket stand, found run-scoring difficult.
Further indication of his maturity, honed by dizzying fluctuations of form in his domestic career and repeated deliberations to quit the game, reflected in his prudent choice of bowlers to target and moments to seize. Rashid and the excellent Nabi were neutered with care, milking them for singles and twos. But the likes of medium-paced Farooqi and Azmatullah Omarzai were remorselessly punished. He sashayed down the track to thunder Farooqi to the stands over long-on, before crashing Azmatullah for two fours in three balls.
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The boundaries let up the pressure the spinners were diligently building. Rashid and friends teased and tickled Rickelton and Bavuma, but could not twist the knife on them. The association swelled, Bavuma unboxed a few strokes to lift the momentum, and South Africa embraced a higher tempo.
Preserving wickets while sustaining a steady rate of scoring has been the preferred template for sides batting first this edition, rather than the full-throttle attack that teams, especially India and South Africa, espoused in the 2023 World Cup. It could be the response to the (relatively) slowish nature of the wickets, where some balls stop at batsmen as early as the first powerplay. The pitches are not appreciably fast and bounce is spongy. So the return of the old strategy to lay the foundation before going berserk at the death. Teams have thus packed the lower-order with robust strikers. Even if Tristan Stubbs and Heinrich Klaassen were on the injury list, breezy half-centuries from Rassie van der Dussen, one of Rickelton’s heroes, and Aiden Markram, slapped 85 runs in the last 10 overs and propelled South Africa to 315 for 6.
A week ago, they had posted 352 and still lost. But that was an aberration, as Kagiso Rabada and Co scavenged on the zombified Afghanistan batsmen. A regular stream of wickets stalled whatever little hopes the Afghans had nursed of overhauling the target. At the halfway stage, they were simply looking to prop up the net run rate. The weight on the shoulders crushed them.
