The Athletic has launched a Cricket WhatsApp Channel. Click here to join.Preparation and analysis have become buzzwords when defining modern cricket at the highest level. But for Kagiso Rabada, it has never been about just that.“Pure instinct is what I went into professional cricket with,” he says in a Zoom interview with The Athletic from his Indian Premier League team Gujarat Titans’ hotel.Rabada’s early years were split between Mamelodi and the West Rand part of Johannesburg. As a youngster in school, his first team sport was rugby union, with cricket only a developing interest. Rugby’s loss has been cricket’s gain.The Under-19 World Cup in 2014 brought him into the limelight as Rabada finished as the joint second-highest wicket-taker, including a haul of 6-25 against Australia in the semi-finals, as South Africa secured the title and he was soon heading for full honours.A Test debut followed in 2015 in India and aged just 22 years and 231 days, he had become the youngest bowler to be ranked first in the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Test rankings. He was all about that “pure instinct” — tall (6ft 3in), quick and always at the batter.Rabada has now played 255 times across formats for his nation and picked up 591 wickets and is still regularly clocked at more than 90 miles an hour. His 340 Test wickets ranks him fourth in South Africa’s all-time list behind Dale Steyn (439), Shaun Pollock (421) and Makhaya Ntini (390).“You gain a lot of experience through instinct,” he says, “but what I realise is when you’re doing badly, you start thinking about a million things. When you’re doing well, because you’re in that flow state, you’re not thinking about much.”Instinct has always taken precedence for Rabada. In a 2019 interview with ESPNCricinfo, he explained that when it comes to balancing instinct with technique, he was “60-40” towards the former while working towards making it 50-50.As time has passed and with more miles in his body, the 30-year-old has realised the value of recognising the other contributors to his success. “When you’re younger, things just sort of happen on their own. The older you get, the more you have to be cognisant of what you were doing when you were younger, especially, when you get through difficult patches,” he says.One of Rabada’s rougher patches came towards the end of 2018 and in early 2019 following a return from a back injury.