It takes a special performance from a special player to shift the focus from the extra special AB de Villiers when he is in full cry. But somebody did manage to steal De Villiers’s thunder. His name is Kagiso Rabada. Rabada has bowled better and taken more wickets than the 3/38 he claimed in Australia’s second innings on Sunday; case in point is the 5/96 he took in the first innings on Friday. But he has never shown more mongrel, more grunt, more edge and more nastiness than on Sunday. Even the rare delivery that might not have threatened became a grenade once it left his hand. Like the one David Warner defended, perfectly sensibly, towards midwicket. The ball was timed at 151km/h and so it cracked off the bat with zeal. Rabada exploded after it, dived full length, spinning like a low-flying, horizontal figure skater as he did so, and came up with the goods in a menacingly cocked throwing arm. Four overs later Rabada removed Warner with a rattlesnake of a delivery that straightened ...
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