Rabada pushes back against India's World Cup inevitability

Many cricket press conferences come and go without raising so much as a blip on the Richter scale. Kagiso Rabada's presser on Friday wasn't among them. Indeed the earth beneath him trembled long after he had stopped speaking.

Not least because that earth was in India, and Rabada dared to say the unsayable; that the men's T20 World Cup that starts on Saturday wasn't going to be dominated by any team.

It's a view that flies in the face of much that has been published in India in recent weeks - that the co-hosts need to do little more than turn up to claim the trophy. India expects, you might say. Because they're playing at home. Because they're the current champions. But also because, it's difficult not to hear and read this ad nauseam, simply because they're India.

Rabada wouldn't agree. "It's going to be an exciting tournament," he began, objectively enough. "Particularly because a lot of overseas players who have been in the IPL are not as foreign to the conditions as they might have been in the past.

"I'm not too sure what's going on in India's camp, whether they're feeling pressure or not. But all I can say is I don't know who the favourites are actually.

"You cannot say there's a favourite in this tournament. I think it's up for grabs. Anyone can take it. We'll be putting our hands up for sure. This tournament is wide open."

Asked whether South Africa "had an urgency" to win the tournament in the wake of their triumph over Australia in the WTC final at Lord's last, Rabada seemed to consider the question something that needed to be scraped off the bottom of his shoe: "Of course there's an urgency. We're at a World Cup."

Did he perceive a lack of desperation among the public for South Africa to win the trophy, and was that tied to the WTC success?

"There hasn't been as much talk around this World Cup. It's more just been well wishes. There's been no reference to the chokers tag. From what I've heard, there's been more talk about selection that anything."

That's a reference to Ryan Rickelton and Tristan Stubbs needing injuries to Tony de Zorzi and Donovan Ferreira to make the squad, which still doesn't include Ottneil Baartman.

How did Rabada deal with being a bowler in an era and a format in which, the reporter said, "you guys are, most of the time, cannon fodder", Rabada again came off his short run.

"I don't know. You go to your room and cry." He softened that slightly with: "It's just really a good challenge."

But, to answer an earlier question on pitches in India veering too far towards the batting end of the equation, he did go into detail.

"It's India, with small grounds and where the ball skids on. When the dew comes it makes it even worse. The ball used to swing for maybe two overs, but the nature of the pitches here is that they're just true.

"Batters can swing through the line. Not to take away any skill from them, but I think it's becoming really brutal. But I guess the pitches have always been like this in India.

"If you look at the way cricket is moving, especially T20 cricket, you're finding that literally everyone in the batting line-up can hit a six. There's so much data, so many stats, so many videos. Things are extremely specific. It evens the playing field.

"Also us, as bowlers, can see what batters are generally trying to do. And batters can pick up on what bowlers are trying to do, so they set out to do that. I don't think it's an easy thing to do in your career. But if you do not evolve as you move, the game moves ahead of you.

"So, vice versa, you've seen that because the pitches are so flat, as soon as there's a bit in it for the bowlers, the batters almost seem like they can't cope with it."

Catch Rabada on a good day behind the microphones, and few are better at fielding questions. Catch him on a day like Friday, and he surpasses even himself.