Did Jason Smith answer the questions about his place in South Africa's T20 World Cup squad with his blast of 22 off 7 that helped Mumbai Indians Cape Town beat Joburg Super Kings at Newlands on Tuesday?

"I don't think he answered them in one innings; in seven balls," Eric Simons, Joburg's assistant coach, said. "He played really well. He hit some crucial boundaries at crucial times and that took the momentum away from us at a time when [the required runrate] was starting to slip to 13s and 14s. But there's a lot more to T20 cricket than a few hits. He hits the ball hard, he hits the ball a long way, and he's done that a few times this tournament already. But there's some way to go still."

When Smith took guard with 19 balls left in the rain-reduced match, Cape Town needed 39. Wian Mulder's first ball to him was a languid full toss, which Smith monstered over the midwicket boundary for six. Then he took two singles to Nandre Burger, who had the stabilising Rassie van der Dussen caught at cover for 35 off 24 to end that over. Smith spliced a pull off Richard Gleeson to long-off for two to start the penultimate over. He muscled the next ball - a slower bouncer - over midwicket for another six, and hit the next straighter and into the stands beyond long-on for his third six.

And then he was gone. Gleeson came around the wicket, and Smith slapped a pull into long-on's hands. But he left his team needing a manageable 12 off 8. Karim Janat and Corbin Bosch took them there with four balls to spare.

Along with Nicholas Pooran's lusty 33 off 15, Smith's searing intervention earned the defending champions' first win in the six games they have played in this year's SA20. Take Smith's jolt of an innings out of the equation and that would likely not have happened.

Sadly, and bizarrely considering Smith was the story of the match, Cape Town's management declined to honour the media's request that he appear at the post-match press conference. Pooran came instead.

"He hits the ball like a West Indian, but there's a lot for him to learn as well," Pooran said of Smith. "The most important thing for him is to learn as fast as possible. He's just been selected for the T20 World Cup. He's heading to India, where conditions will be favourable for him. He has everything that can make him do well there.

"We're really happy to see him smashing it for us. So our job is to give him that freedom to express himself without any pressure."

Smith's performance was a timely blow against the tide of criticism that followed his selection in the T20 World Cup squad, which was announced on Friday. What had he done to deserve that, was the gist of it. Because Smith is brown, the theory that he was picked to balance the race equation soon took hold.

The only clear bit of statistical evidence to support his selection was the 68 not out he hammered off 19 for KwaZulu-Natal Coastal in a T20 against Northerns in Centurion in November. Two innings later in the same competition he made 58, but more sedately off 41. For that he is given a place in a World Cup squad?

Since he scored an undefeated 117 for KZN-Coastal against North West in a first-class match at Kingsmead in March last year, Smith has reached 50 only eight times in 28 innings across the formats without going on to a century.

But this kind of aerial view of the facts might miss the point. Let's go back to that blistering 68 not out in November. Smith's team needed 104 in seven overs to win the rain-affected match. He took guard after two overs, when they were 18/1. When they slipped to 53/3 in the fifth, the target had ballooned to 51 off 16.

Not many sides would reel that in. But not many sides have a player like Smith, who roared to 50 off 15. The stand that took KZN-Coastal to victory off the last ball mirrored those numbers: 50 off 15. Smith, who hit two fours and nine sixes, scored 48 of them.

In October 2024, KZN-Coastal wobbled to 11/2 in pursuit of 156 to beat Free State in a T20 in Bloemfontein. Enter Smith to score 65 not out off 44 to seal the win by six wickets with nine balls to spare.

Tuesday's display was the latest to fit that script. The game looks like it's getting away? Send in Smith. Of course, he doesn't always reroute an innings. That's cricket. But there is enough evidence that Smith is capable of fast-forwarding a team's innings in breathtakingly dramatic fashion. That he doesn't always score a significant pile of runs matters less than how and how quickly he scores them.

And where and when he is deployed, as Simons made clear when explaining the role Donovan Ferreira played for Joburg: "You [need to] get him to the crease at the right time rather than the wrong time. That's what this game of T20 is all about. Some people get to the wicket in the 15th over and that's when they're effective. They get there in the 10th and they're not.

"So it's not just about hitting the ball for big boundaries. It's also about doing it at the right time, in the right way, and rotating the strike."

Smith could do worse than stick close to Pooran for the rest of the SA20, if only to absorb some of the Trinidadian's thinking. Along with his apparently unshakeable confidence.

Asked if his gameplan came down to hammering the bowling as violently as he dared, Pooran said, "If it looks like I'm trying to hit the ball as hard as possible, that means I'm not batting well. Normally guys say it's the other way around: 'How do you hit sixes so easily?' But I'm happy that the ball is going over the ropes, which is most important.

"Yes, I love to hit sixes. That's my job. That's what they pay me for.

"But it's not only about hitting sixes. It's also about batsmanship, adapting to different conditions, and playing the situation the right way. I pride myself on playing the situation the right way."

Pooran hit five sixes on Tuesday. He launched three of them in Gleeson's third over. One flew high over fine leg and lodged in the uppermost deck of the members' stand - a four-storey building. If you thought Pooran would be happy with that, think again.

"I'm sure I've hit bigger sixes than that," he said. "I was vexed because I hit it a bit too flat. It hit the roof; it should have missed the roof [and gone over it] completely. I was unlucky there."

Similarly, Pooran bridled at the idea that Cape Town's dressingroom harboured bigger hitters than him: "Jason can hit a long ball for sure. [Ryan] Rickelton can hit it. But they can't hit as many sixes as I can."

Putting Pooran's batting where his mouth is is complicated, not least because - in T20s alone - he has faced more than five times as many deliveries as Smith has and almost three times as many as Rickelton has. But he's not wrong. Pooran has sent 10.17% of the balls bowled to him in T20s into the stands for six. The same stat for Rickelton is 6.90%, and for Smith 4.81%.

Of those three players, only Smith is going to the T20 World Cup. If he closes the six-hitting gap significantly, he will have had an excellent tournament.