26 July will undoubtedly be carved on Kagiso Rabada's memory lane for a very long time after he scooped nearly every award that was on offer at the 2016 Cricket South Africa Awards.
The 21 year old seamer has made a very impressive start to international cricket and capped off a fine season by becoming the first South African cricketer ever to scoop not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, definitely not 5 but 6 individual awards on one night.
As if that record feat was not enough on a cold Johannesburg night, at the age of 21 years 62 days Rabada is by far the youngest to have won South African cricket’s premier accolade.
The other eight players to have received CSA’s most prestigious award are Jacques Kallis (2004 and 2011), Makhaya Ntini (2005 and 2006), Hashim Amla (2010 and 2013) and AB de Villiers (2014 and 2015) who have all won the award twice with the other previous winners being Shaun Pollock (2007), Dale Steyn (2008), Graeme Smith (2009), and Vernon Philander (2012).
In addition to being announced as the South African cricketer of the year, Rabada was named Castle Lager Test Cricketer of the Year and Castle Lager ODI Cricketer of the Year, was honoured by his peers by being named SA Players’ Player of the Year and by the fans on being named SA Fans Player of the Year.
He received his sixth award for bowling the RAM delivery of the Year to England’s Jason Roy in the KFC T20 International at the Bidvest Wanderers Stadium.
His international statistics are remarkable with 24 wickets in only six matches at an average of 24.70 with a strike rate of 39.6 and 37 wickets in 20 ODIs at an average of 21.45 with an economy rate of 4.78 and a strike rate of 26.9.
The musings of a feather? No, Rabada has a very exciting cricket career ahead of him and the world certainly must start taking notice.