This is becoming the World Cup of the singular, explosive individual performance. No game has been safe when the likes of Brendon McCullum, Chris Gayle, or even Afghanistan's No.10 and No.11 are at large. The realm of possibility has been widened.
Many of the 23,612 who arrived at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Friday were speculating on marvels from Jamaica's Gayle. The best batsman in the world was a safer bet. AB de Villiers is that rare creature who produces incredible feats of technique and innovation regularly, almost predictably, and yet still manages to astonish. His 162 from 66 balls was just another AB masterpiece, a Twenty20 innings swaddled inside a 50-over game, but nobody who saw it will ever forget it.
This game was important to the South Africans. After a diffident start to the tournament, the Proteas had to assert their strength. A corner was asking to be turned.
The West Indies, on the other hand, are hoping to make the quarter-finals and just see what happens. They are the quintessential "on their day" team. On their day, they will beat anyone. On their day, they can win the World Cup. But this mentality can also be that of a "not our day" team, and the West Indians soon had that look.
After a good start, they dropped four catches in a chaotic half-hour and batted like a team that could lose to Ireland. Or worse: to England.
The moment of change was de Villiers' arrival, in the 30th over, with South Africa 3-146. A steady build had been broken by two quick Gayle wickets. The West Indies had executed their containment plans successfully.
De Villiers came out, as always, looking like the house sports captain who wins the freestyle championship at dawn and the tennis title by morning tea, scores five tries and kicks 10 conversions for the rugby side in the afternoon, and then knocks up a century after dinner.
He crept up on the West Indian bowlers, nibbling a run a ball in half an hour. He accelerated past his half century, but the first sign that something extraordinary was afoot was when he went on bended knee to sweep Andre Russell for six to go to 89. The ball was a yorker a metre outside off stump. De Villiers had been waiting, somewhere near silly point, to turn it into a leg-side full toss. Russell had put the ball exactly where he wanted; so had de Villiers.
West Indies captain Jason Holder is refreshingly unafraid to show he cares. Having bowled seven high-quality overs for 29 runs, he brought himself back for the last three from the Randwick End. He found himself bearing into the teeth of Cyclone Abraham.
Eleven runs came from Holder's eighth over. Still, 40 off eight was respectable. In Holder's ninth over, the 48th of the innings, de Villiers hit an on-drive with the trajectory of a sweet eight iron into the Trumper Stand to raise his hundred. It was one of many balls he put in those seats, which was poetic, because his hitting brought to mind what England captain Archie MacLaren said about Victor Trumper: "I exploited the inner and outer ring – a man there, a man there and another man covering him. I told my bowlers to pitch on the short side on the off. I set my heart and brain on every detail of our policy. Well … Victor hit two balls straight into the practice ground … I couldn't very well have had a man fielding in the bloody practice ground now, could I?"
It was like that for Holder, whose neat figures were now a ruin, nine overs for 74. Still, when the only safe place for a bowler was in the Members with Curtly Ambrose, Holder did not shirk, and gave himself the last over. De Villiers went two, six, six, four, six, six. The ball was sailing with the mechanical regularity of clay pigeons from a launcher. The crowd was chanting "AB, AB, AB", albeit in a different accent from 25 or 30 years ago.
The raw numbers are worth savouring. In the other AB's time, middle-order batsmen complained that they came in too late to score centuries in one-day cricket. In not much more than an hour, De Villiers took South Africa from 146 to 408. His century, off 52 balls, was the fastest in a one-day international on Australian soil; but his last 100 runs took just 27 balls. He scored his last 60 runs off 12 legal deliveries, plus two no-balls. He gave literal meaning to the term "free hit". (Poor Holder's last 12 balls cost 64; he also brought up his century on the final ball.)
From there, the evening's play unravelled in a kind of extended shocked silence from the West Indians and a satisfied post-prandial gurgle from the South Africans, who have not only found form, but a flashing red light of danger.
