Kagiso Rabada should have slammed the brakes in his second over this morning. India's most experienced pair Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane had put on 52 runs in 10 overs. their lead had grown to 110 runs and South Africa's attack often erred on the side of bowling too short.
Rabada himself had sent his opening delivery over the wicket-keeper's head. But with his eighth ball, Rabada had Rahane fending outside off, hit his glove and the ball traveled aerially towards the slip cordon.
For a few seconds, Aiden Markram, at second slip, didn't move although he was closest to it. Keegan Petersen, at gully, waited to see what Markram would do. When Markram decided to take a few steps forward, he was too late. The ball fell in front of him while Petersen bit on his fingernails. Rabada rested his head in his hands and in the moment, South Africa's motivation seemed to have sapped.
But it returned to Rababa almost immediately as he bounced Pujara and beat his outside edge twice. He found the patch outside off from which the ball reared up unexpectedly and then mixed it up by bowling fuller. Seventeen deliveries after the drop, Rabada made Rahane play at a back of a length ball that moved away, took the outside edge and had him caught behind. South Africa had finally broken through.
Rabada went on to beat Pujara's forward defence, hit him on the pad and dismissed him for 53, also beat Rishabh Pant, hit him on the gloves and had him caught behind as he attempted to stop out and mow one. In 11 deliveries, Rabada took three for seven to put South Africa back in the game. That's after his first 10.5 overs cost 42 runs, including an opening spell of three overs that went for 17.
In a nutshell, that's been the story of Rabada's series. He has delivered some crucial spells - like his 3 for 36 in India's second innings in Centurion that helped to force a lower-order collapse - and his 2 for 21 in 3.1 overs to end the Indian first innings in this match - but he has also bowled some innocuous ones.
On the first day of the series, Rabada went wicketless for 20 overs. He only conceded 51 runs and looked the most threatening. Still, it contributed to South Africa starting slowly and that day, when they conceded 272 for 3, they were more undercooked than usual. There were reasons for that, including the six-month break between their last Test and the Boxing Day match and the many, many behind-the-scenes shenanigans.
The same logic could be applied to Rabada. There must be reasons for his inconsistency, so let's try to unpack them. It seems like yesterday, but it's as many as five years ago, that Rabada was the best in the world. In 2016 and 2017, he took more wickets than anyone else, 165 in 61 matches across formats. He also bowled more overs than any other seamer.
Fast-forward to the last two years and Rabada has fallen to the 17th most prolific bowler in that period with 60 wickets in 33 matches. He is also only the 32nd most used seamer, even though he has delivered more overs in the IPL in these two years than anyone else. Is it a case of fewer overs leading to fewer wickets?
Maybe. Or maybe it is workload management necessitated by the two back injuries Rabada sustained in 2018and 2019. Those may have been caused by overload but they also appear to have changed something about him.
Since then, he looks like a bowler that shifts through some gears but not all of them. There's a lack of intensity on some occasions which is difficult to explain and is often sometimes overcompensated for. Since 2019, Rabada has bowled 65 no-balls, more than anyone else in international cricket; around one in every 13 overs.
In this series, he has bowled 28, of which 17 came in the first Test - the most in an international game in the last five years - and 11 in this one. So it may not be that Rabada isn't trying, it could be that he is trying too hard and too much when he knows he needs to.
On the face of it, that's not a bad thing at all. Despite his IPL millions, his side hustle in the music industry and his sports agency that launched last year, Rabada cares enough about South African cricket and Test cricket to keep running in and delivering when needed.
That's important because just four days before this Test match, the South African squad saw how easy it is for someone to walk away. Quinton de Kock retired from the longest format for a range of reasons, including the packed international schedule. Rabada is one of the players who could have similar ideas, and if he does, it will be devastating for South African cricket.
He is their most experienced bowler and their most aggressive. Even when he is down on pace or accuracy, Rabada can almost always be riled up and that may be when South Africa get the best out of him. Perhaps they just need to keep in mind when and how to use him.
Though Rabada is almost always given the new ball, he has the fourth-highest average among bowlers who have delivered more than 250 overs since January 2015.Lungi Ngidi and Duanne Olivier may be better suited to that task. Rabada also tends to get better as a series develops, with his average in the second match in a series in the last three years (18.06) almost half of his average in the first match of a series (35.61).
It gives even better in the third Test of a series - 16.11 - which bodes well for Newlands and makes the case for South Africa to play more three-match Test series, but that is a story for another day.