“On the flipside of things, you’ve got Jansen, who just seems to be getting better and better,” Steyn said. “He’s starting to play for teams that are winning more trophies – for Sunrises Eastern Cape, they’ve won the [SA20 league] three out of four years now. I feel that adds a sense of, like a belief that you can do it at the highest level. And Jansen has now certainly started to step up where KG hasn’t had as many medals or trophies or anything like that and his performance has kind of leaned in the same direction.

“I’m hoping that this is the season that he can really stand up because he is a real wicket-taker, he’s once won the purple cap so he knows what it’s about. But can he – again, we are talking about those inches – find something else in his game just to go a step ahead? Because we’ve seen him be naughty: had his foot over the line in games that he should have closed out and things like that, where you just feel… But maybe he’s just short of a couple wickets and maybe just a bit of luck and hopefully the season could be that season for him.”

Rayudu, sitting alongside Steyn on the programme, brought the focus to something a lot more specific: yorkers.

“I think one thing we have noticed over the years about Rabada, you know, as you [Steyn] also used to bowl that cross-seam sort of an outswinger, a baseball sort of a thing, and he used to bowl a very good yorker early on when he was bowling seam-up,” Rayudu said. “But has he started bowling too much of that cross-seam? He lost his yorker. I think that’s the reason why we are seeing him not bowl so well in the death. But initially, he used to bowl really well in the death when he just started. Maybe that’s something that he can get back into his game.”

ESPNcricinfo’s data says Rabada bowled 21 yorkers and 60 full-length deliveries in IPL 2020, when he picked up 30 wickets, and in the three IPL seasons before 2026, just 15 yorkers and 87 full-length deliveries. That’s a significant change. Steyn agreed with Rayudu, but pointed out that it was a South African problem, and not just a Rabada problem.

“He had fantastic yorker and then there was a season or period where the South African bowling line-up kind of went back of a length and crossed the seam, and I think that’s where he kind of lost that yorker a little bit, whereas Marco doesn’t bowl a lot of yorkers, he uses a lot more variations,” Steyn said. “KG has been searching for that yorker and I think he’s just missed it a little bit. He’s missed low full-tosses and he’s been hit out of the ground. Whereas Marco has used that length, his height, the odd yorker every now and then.

“So KG is searching a little bit and Marco has kind of figured it out and you can tell by, what is it, ten balls per wicket versus 71 [in the death overs since the start of IPL 2025]? One guy searching the other one, he knows exactly what he wants to do.”