“The difference between Quinton De Kock and somebody else coming in in that position, where you’ve been sitting on the bench, is that he’s probably pretty content with his career,” Finch said on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut show. “He’s thinking, you know what, I’m going to be back-up to Ryan Rickelton most likely. He gets an opportunity when Rohit gets injured. So he comes in and he’s just relaxed, he’s calm. His heart rate doesn’t seem to be above 60 too often. Nothing seems to faze him.
“So that just goes to show a guy who’s really at peace with where his career’s at compared to somebody else who might think, you know what, I need to get runs today to maybe get another opportunity. So he’s able to be a bit more free-flowing and just back his skill and not get too overawed by that situation or what’s down the track.”
De Kock, now 33, reversed his decision to retire from ODI cricket in September 2025. He had quit Test cricket already, and while he had never officially retired from T20Is, he had not been picked by South Africa for a while after the 2024 T20 World Cup. Then in November 2021, de Kock was back in the South Africa T20I squad, and Rickelton had to make way. And then he was playing at the T20 World Cup earlier this year, even though he was well off his best.
Now, at MI, it’s Rickelton vs de Kock again.
“From the first game, you guys asked me: why Ryan, why not Quinny? And there was a reason for it. And when the time was right, we played Quinny and he patiently waited like a good pro and he executed a brilliant innings. It’s great to have that, early doors. We need everyone to be firing like that and have that hunger out there in the middle.”
Rickelton, for the record, has entered double-digits just once since that innings against KKR.
De Kock’s 112, off exactly half the balls in the MI innings, wasn’t even enough to take MI past 200, with Naman Dhir’s 50 from No. 4 at a strike rate of 161.29 – de Kock scored at 186.66 – and Hardik Pandya’s 12 the only other double-digit scores. In the last four overs of their innings, MI only scored 35 runs. De Kock faced ten of those balls and scored just 17 runs. The momentum was lost, but de Kock was responsible for taking them to that point to start with.
“He was playing those big shots and putting pressure on the bowlers most of the time. So that was a really key thing for me in this particular innings.”