On a grey London morning in the WTC 2025 Final, South Africa handed the new ball to Kagiso Rabada and he did what he has always done when his team needed him most. He delivered.
It didn’t happen immediately, though. When you win the toss and opt to bowl first under cloudy skies, you expect wickets early. And when the first six overs were done with no wickets in sight, South Africa were sensing trouble.
But then the pace spearhead tore through the top order, removing Usman Khawaja and Cameron Green in the same over to kickstart the collapse, and returned later to finish the job with his 17th five-wicket haul in Tests. Australia were bowled out for 212, with Rabada’s incisive early spell laying the platform for South Africa’s strong start to the WTC 2025 Final.
In some ways, this wasn’t a new story. Rabada has often been the one leading from the front for South Africa in Tests in the last decade. But the quality of the occasion gave this performance an edge, like it did more than a decade ago when his demolition job in the semi-final of the U19 World Cup against the Australian side paved way for an ICC title.
Here, South Africa needed their main man to turn up at Lord’s. He did, with pace, precision and importantly, the Aussies felt his presence, from ball one.
There was a time, particularly in the previous WTC cycle, when Rabada’s impact in the early stages of a Test wasn’t always pronounced. But in the 2023–2025 cycle, he has become consistently effective with the new ball, a shift that has made his team far more threatening early in games.
That small, yet sharp improvement has made a big difference. Taking top-order wickets early puts the opposition on the back foot and opens up innings for the others, who feed off Rabada’s momentum.
The new-ball dominance has come without completely sacrificing his old-ball threat. With the old ball (in the 31–80 overs phase of innings), Rabada’s average has climbed from 17.4 to 23.9, and his strike-rate from 29.1 to 39.2. A slight dip, but not a worrying one. In fact, it shows Rabada’s game has recalibrated. He’s now a bowler who can win games up front.
Rabada’s road to this final wasn’t without turbulence. His admission of a recreational drug offence earlier this year could have derailed both his focus and public perception. Instead, Rabada addressed it head-on, served his one-month suspension, and came back just in time to finish the IPL season with Gujarat Titans before joining South Africa for the final.
He didn’t shy away from the scrutiny. “To those people I’m deeply sorry,” he said in a press interaction. “The people closest to me are the ones I felt I let down… but life moves on.”
That statement wasn’t defensive. It was Rabada taking responsibility, but also shifting the focus back to what he does best: winning cricket matches.
Temba Bavuma backed him with the ball on Day One, and Rabada repaid that faith with the new ball. He was slightly shorter to start off, but soon hit a nagging length and generated movement through the air. He wasn’t just steady, he was cutting through a line-up filled with experience and pedigree. And if not for a missed review against Beau Webster early in his innings, Australia might not have breached the 200-run mark.
His double blow in the seventh over put Australia on the mat. And just when they were inching back through Webster in the second session, he returned to spark a collapse. A second five-for at Lord’s. A performance that also saw him leap past Allan Donald to become South Africa’s fourth-highest wicket-taker in Tests.
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The broader theme of Rabada’s career and impact is clear – you can debate whether he consistently wins matches for South Africa or not, but it’s easy to see that when he doesn’t turn up, South Africa lose.
In Test matches where South Africa have ended up on the losing side, Rabada averages 28.7 with a strike rate of 50.5, a far cry from his overall figures: an average of 21.82 and strike rate of 39.1, the latter the best for any bowler with 150 or more wickets in Test history.
It’s an important reminder: Rabada’s success is often the bellwether of South Africa’s fate. When he dominates, South Africa tend to win. When he doesn’t, their odds dip dramatically. At Lord’s, against a significantly better Australian side on paper, South Africa couldn’t have afforded Rabada to be off colour. And he wasn’t.
The early breakthroughs, the clinical returns late in the day, and the mental weight of his presence; Rabada turned up, and the numbers say he’s doing that earlier and more decisively than ever before.
The South African batters might have to go past a relentless, extraordinary bowling attack to get their hands on the trophy. Early signs from Day One are that they wouldn’t with the top-order folding. But with Kagiso Rabada in this kind of rhythm and not a massive first innings total on board for the Aussies, don’t rule South Africa out of this Test just yet.
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