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'You just can't script that' - SA breathe easy after a 'Camel classic' in Centurion

Kagiso Rabada roars in satisfaction after making 31 off 26 to take South Africa home Associated Press

What's the best way to calm the nerves when your team - as in the one you actually play for - is 32 runs away from victory with just two wickets in hand, like South Africa were at lunch on day four in Centurion?

If you're Temba Bavuma, it's to hide "in the toilet and sulk," as he confessed to the press afterwards. If you're coach Shukri Conrad, it's to head to quiet corner of the ground for a few puffs of your not-so-secret vice. If you're Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen

…. it's to join the coach. For real.

"We were sitting in our little corner at the back there and the only thing I said to them was, whatever decision you're going to take as to how you want to go about your business, go with it throughout," Conrad told a press conference afterwards. "If we get close, I don't want you to then start fiddling around. Back yourselves with however you want to play it from the start. If you're going to go balls to the wall, then even if you were to get close, just keep doing what you set out to do. That's as much as the conversation was. Because this match was a classic, like a Camel classic."

Rabada and Jansen were already doing that. Rabada hit the second and eighth balls he faced for four, Jansen was five off six at the break and together, they had put on 17 runs. They had started to steady a collapse that started when Bavuma walked despite not inside-edging Mohammed Abbas and resulted in four wickets falling in the space of 12 balls. Bavuma retreated to the bathroom but Jansen and Rabada had to keep things going on, and they settled on their plan early.

"I came in and I said to him, I'm going to look to be positive," Rabada said. "Without any hesitation, he (Jansen) said, 'okay.' And he had his own game plan. I didn't tell him how to bat. His main thing was one ball at a time, play it on his merit and that's what he did. He was a bit more orthodox. I was a bit more unorthodox."

Post-lunch, Rabada took the first risk, when he drove away from his body and edged Abbas but the chance fell short. "I was going after the drive and it felt like I could get nicked off, and I did," he said. "And it bounced short. So I'm thankful for that."

It didn't stop him from playing his shots. In the next over Naseem Shah offered it short and wide, Rabada got up on his toes and cracked the shot over cover, just as he planned to. "I said to myself, 'just give me a cut, give me a cut, I'm setting up for the cut'," Rabada said "And then he gave me a cut. I set it up nicely and connected it."

For Conrad, who sat stony-faced on the dressing room balcony, "there were little visions of Brian Charles (Lara) at times," as he watched Rabada bat. Bavuma was still in the bathroom. He only dared to emerge an over later, when Jansen had crisply hit Abbas through cover and South Africa needed 15 runs. "I could hear the guys clapping and Kyle Verreynne shouting. The way he was shouting, it was positive shouts, so I thought, 'okay, let me come show my face'," Bavuma said.

Still, Rababa and Jansen were not so sure. They knew Pakistan's bowling quality, they had seen their top and middle order blown away and they understood that they were the last pair South Africa could rely on. "I just kept thinking, I'm not going to leave it to Patto (Dane Paterson)," Rabada said. "Not that I don't have any faith in him but sometimes there's two voices in your head: the one voice says, you're not going to do this. And the other one has to overpower it."

The first ball Rabada faced off Aamer Jamal was a no-ball and he took a single off it. Thirteen needed. He had to wait until the penultimate ball of the over to face again, after Jansen ducked, watched one down leg, defended and then cut him for one. Rabada smoked the final ball of the over back over Jamal's head and then creamed the last one through the covers to leave South Africa one hit away. But it was only after he got Jansen back on strike and South Africa needed two to win that Rabada believed South Africa had it.

"Before that, I just kept thinking, 'don't drop the ball, just keep with your processes'. The main thing I was thinking was, continue to stay positive," he said. "If I looked to get into my shell, and I got out trying to do that, then I would have been more upset. If I got out being positive, I would have accepted that."

Bavuma may not have. By then, he was fully invested in Rabada getting the runs. "How he did it. I couldn't care, to be honest," Bavuma joked. "It's weird with him. You never know what type of KG is going to come out with the bat: it's the one who wants to play all correct, and then there's the other guy who played the way that he did today."

In the end, Rabada finished with the third-highest score by a No.10 in a successful chase and called it "without a doubt" the best Test innings of his career. "With a lot of pressure on, it's the one innings that I'll remember for the rest of my life."

He won't be the only one. Bavuma emerged from his self-imposed exile to see Rabada bat and then saw him down at the stairs and "jumped on him with joy", so much so that he "found myself to be taken aback by the emotion." In the moment Conrad was left speechless. "I don't think we can put into words what that was. You can't script that," he said. And for the 3,600 people who were in the ground and the many, many others watching on television screens, it sent a message about what to do when your team is under pressure. As Bavuma and Conrad and Rabada and Jansen did: be yourself.