Who am I to stop De Kock from coming back?

“I MISS playing for South Africa.” That’s all Proteas Men’s coach Shukri Conrad needed to hear to be interested in the rest of the call coming in at 2am.

- ZAAHIER ADAMS

At the end of the phone was none other than Quinton de Kock, who felt the need to ring up Conrad all the way in Australia at that hour to urgently discuss his future.

"We got to Darwin, I just put my head to the pillow at about 2 in the morning when my phone rang, and it was Quinny," Conrad said, about the call on Monday.

“He just expressed the desire to play for South Africa again in both white-ball formats. We chatted for a bit and I said I'd come back to him in a couple of days. Then, I chatted to a few other people and the rest is history.”

It was all rather bizarre considering the 32-year-old had retired from ODI's after a splendid 2023 World Cup campaign in India, and had been considerably vague about his T20 International future after last year’s T20 World Cup final defeat to India in Barbados.

With the emergence of a new generation of batters consisting of Dewald Brevis and Lhuan-dre Pretorius along with Ryan Rickelton and Matthew Breetzke finally starting to fulfil their promise after waiting in De Kock’s shadow for so many years, it seemed like the Proteas had moved on from De Kock.