A singer opens their mouth to start a song and not a sound emerges. A truck driver reaches for a steering wheel that, bafflingly, isn't there. A politician suffers a sudden loss of dishonesty. Quinton de Kock turns up at a match without a single bat.

Which of those statements is true? The latter, it turns out. WTF?

"I don't know how to answer that question," De Kock told a press conference. "I felt a bit stupid when I noticed. I've got so many bags over the last year, so I'm going through all bits and bobs, and I just went blank.

"Honestly, I don't know. I forgot them. I went a bit white when I realised, and I had to make one or two phone calls in half-an-hour before the bus was leaving."

Leaving the team hotel in Johannesburg, that is, to play the second T20I against West Indies in Centurion. All the while, De Kock's bats were 1,000 kilometres away from him at his home in Knysna - he was rested for the first match of the series in Paarl on Tuesday.

What to do?

"Before I got into the changeroom I went looking between [Dewald Brevis] and Ricks [Ryan Rickelton], and I just pulled one out of Brevi's bag. I said, 'I'm going to use this one today.' Brevi said, 'That's fine. It's a good bat for you because it's left-handed.'"

Who knew Brevis was a jokester?

"Youngsters these days," De Kock said with a shake of his head. "He's still adamant about that. But it did its service tonight."

And how. De Kock scored 115 off 49, reaping almost three-quarters of his runs in fours and sixes. His innings was key to South Africa chasing down a challenging target of 222. They won by seven wickets with 15 balls to spare and clinched the series with a game to spare.