The South Africa side that beat New Zealand in the first T20I on Sunday had Keshav Maharaj as the only member to have played 50 T20Is. But there is another who looks like he may as well have the same number of caps. Nineteen-year-old quick Nqobani Mokoena came back from two wicketless overs to finish with 3 for 26 in 3.3 overs, and earned the Player-of-the-Match award on debut and the respect of his (only slightly more) experienced team-mates.
“He looks like someone who’s played 50 games already,” Gerald Coetzee, who was playing for South Africa for the first time in five months said of Mokoena at the post-match press conference. “He looked really calm. If it went well or if it went for a boundary, he just looked like he was composed. That’s great signs.”
Mokoena, who broke through after a stunning SA20 2025-26 campaign, in which he was the joint fourth-highest wicket-taker, is so highly rated that he was given the new ball in his first international. He made it talk, perhaps a bit too much initially, with hard lengths that became short, and saw his mistake when Tim Robinson pulled him for four.
Mokoena adjusted straight away, and his first full ball found the edge, only for there to be enough pace on it to beat the wicketkeeper. That he learnt quickly was obvious. Mokoena was taken out of the attack, and brought back after the powerplay, when he bowled a tight over but for the last ball which was directed down leg. Mitchell Santner flicked it away for four .
At that stage, Mokoena thought it might turn into a tough day. “The first two overs didn’t really go my way, and I thought I wasn’t going to get any wickets,” he told the broadcaster.
But on a surface Coetzee described as “a bit tacky and two-paced”, when Mokoena came back, he knew what to do. His SA20 home ground is Boland Park, and the same terms are often used to describe its slower pitches. So he took pace off, and was rewarded with his first wicket: that of 100-times capped Jimmy Neesham.
“It was quite cool, and I just relaxed after that,” Mokoena said. “The conditions were in our favour as bowlers. It was quite nippy, so I got to use my slower balls, and had fun.”
And Mokoena wasn’t the only one enjoying what is seen as a contextless T20I, which comes a week after the format’s World Cup and two years before the next one. There are some players, like Mokoena, with careers to launch, and others, like Coetzee, with ones to rebuild. And the senior pace bowler also had his moments. Coetzee took the first two New Zealand wickets, and finished with an economy rate of 4.66 to cap off yet another comeback from injury.
In October last year, Coetzee tore his pectoral muscle while playing against Namibia, and was sidelined until the start of the SA20. That match in Windhoek was only his third international in 2025 after he spent most of his time last year recovering from a groin injury. In a career that has been marked by lengthy layoffs, Coetzee has only managed to earn 14 T20I caps in two-and-a-half years but has stayed the course and hopes that this time he has returned to stay.
“Anyone who gets injured and then has to work their way back knows it’s always hard,” he said. “I had recurring injuries, which is very difficult, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. You always learn something, you always get a bit better, and it always means so much when you get back here. It has been challenging, but it’s also been a blessed time.”
While Coetzee concentrates on what has gone right and how he has been able to work his way back, he might also be thinking about the future. After South Africa have a quiet winter, things heat up with an eight-Test summer, and with preparations for the 2027 ODI World Cup. Given the amount of cricket, they are likely to need a clutch of quicks. Coetzee must consider himself among them, although he doesn’t quite know where he is in the queue.
“South African cricket is in a very healthy place, and we’ve got a really great pool of players. Where I’m in the pecking order, I don’t really know,” he said. “I’m playing now, which is great, and that will be my focus – just to play where I can to do my best. And you can always get better at something. There’s not one specific thing. You always try to get better and use every opportunity you get.”
