Kagiso Rabada etched his name in the history books during the first day of play on Wednesday (June 11) in the 2025 World Test Championship (WTC) final between South Africa and Australia at the Lord's Cricket Ground.

After Temba Bavuma won the toss and chose to bowl first, Rabada vindicated the decision by dismissing Usman Khawaja (0) and Cameron Green (7) in the seventh over of the match. Later, he returned to the attack in the third session and dismissed Beau Webster, Pat Cummins, and Mitchell Starc.

Through the course of the spell (5-51), Rabada completed 50 wickets against Australia in Test cricket and broke a massive world record of Jasprit Bumrah. Among players with 50 or more wickets against the reigning World Test champions in the history of the longest format, Rabada has the best strike rate (SR). In this list of 64 bowlers, Rabada is the first with a SR of 38. Infact, Rabada and Bumrah are the only players who have a rate of less than 40 balls per wicket.

Best SR vs Australia (Bowlers With More Than 50 Wickets)

Player	Wickets vs Australia	Bowling SR
Kagiso Rabada	54	38
Jasprit Bumrah	64	39.9
GA Lohmann	77	42.9
Billy Barnes	51	44.8
Dale Steyn	70	46.2

Infact, Rabada (39.1) holds the record for the best SR in Test cricket history among players with more than 150 Test wickets and is the only player in this list with a rate of taking wickets per ball lower than 40. Only GA Lohmann, who took 112 wickets and played his last Test match in 1896, has a better SR than Rabada among the 203 bowlers who took more than 100 Test wickets.

Moreover, the South African pace giant went past Allan Donald and became the Proteas' fourth-highest wicket-taker in history. Rabada now has 332 wickets in just 71 matches to his name. He also became the third South African bowler to take multiple five-wicket hauls at Lord's after Donald and Makhaya Ntini.

Rabada is only the second player to take a five-wicket haul in a WTC final after New Zealand's Kyle Jamieson (5-30), who achieved the feat in the inaugural final against India in 2021 at Southampton.

Overall, the 30-year-old is the second South African to achieve the milestone in the final of an ICC event after Jacques Kallis (5/30 vs West Indies, ICC Knockout Trophy 1998). Apart from the three players mentioned above, Australia's Gary Gilmour (5/48 vs West Indies, 1975 Cricket World Cup) and West Indies' Joel Garner (5-38 vs England, 1979 World Cup) are the only ones to achieve the milestone in the summit clash of a global event.

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