7 young cricketers who could become the next batting giants

Unless you are a Shane Watson or a Rohit Sharma, there’s no way you can expect yourself to sustain for too long in international cricket on the back of pure ‘potential’.Talk potential, talk new talent.The ‘new kid on the block’ always catches the eye of the cricketing world, especially if he’s extraordinarily talented. What’s amazing is the frequency at which new talent is churned out by teams around the world. What’s even more remarkable is the fact that very few of these boys manage to strike gold in the international arena. Most of them just disappear into oblivion or turn into pale shadows of their once much-hyped selves.Over the last two and a half decades, we’ve seen some kids make it big (read: really big) and actually match expectation with performance over a prolonged period of time. When these boys were new to the cricketing world and vice versa, they were touted to be the ones to watch out for.Batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Brian Lara, Sanath Jayasuriya, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Jacques Kallis, Mahela Jayawardene, Adam Gilchrist, Sourav Ganguly, AB de Villiers, Virender Sehwag, Kumar Sangakkara, and Kevin Pietersen are just some of the names that comes to my mind when I think of young men who were expected to take the limited-overs format by storm – and they did.As we move on from the heroes of the previous editions of the ICC Cricket World Cup to the 2015’s mega event, here’s a look at some of the batsmen who are in their ‘boys-to-men’ transition phase, and are the ones who hold the key to the next two months and the subsequent future of their respective teams.    

#7 Quinton de Kock, South Africa

Assets: Ability to attack from ball one and set a decent platform for the batsmen to follow, skills behind the stumps.

Forte: His ability to take on the new ball bowlers.

At just 22 years of age, this likeable character is already being called the South African version of Adam Gilchrist. His emergence as a ‘keeper-batsman at the top of the order tempted the selectors to pick him (ahead of Thami Tsolekile) in all limited-overs series in the recent past. And de Kock has struck gold over the last 20 months or so, thus indirectly pushing any other World Cup hopeful out of the picture. The seemingly harmless boy is the perfect foil for his calm and patient partner, Hashim Amla.

He has no qualms about launching an assault on the opposition bowlers from the word go and has provided ample evidence of his ability to quickly adapt to alien conditions in the past.