A late-blooming allrounder who swapped pace for precision because of knee injuries, Dwaine Pretorius offered awayswingers and lower-order runs to South Africa in the post-Kallis era.

He missed the 2008 Under-19 World Cup after tearing a cartilage in his right knee, and chose to pursue an accounting degree for the next three years. After he returned to the game, Pretorius was named the T20 Amateur Cricketer of the Year in 2011-12 and was included in the Lions squad for the 2012 Champions League T20, but the knee flared up again and he required surgery.

Following his second comeback, Pretorius stopped striving for speed and shelved the idea of bowling 140-plus. Instead, he operated in the mid-130s and tried to emulate Vernon Philander's accuracy. He earned a franchise contract in the 2014-15 season and was named the South African Cricketers' Association's MVP in 2015.

He made his ODI debut in 2016 and got a fifty in his second innings, in Christchurch in February 2017. He picked up figures of 3 for 5 three days later in Wellington. In his first T20I innings, in March 2019, Pretorius hit an unbeaten 42-ball 77 to score a comfortable win over Sri Lanka. He went on to play the 2019 ODI World Cup and made his Test debut later that year, at home against England. In 2021, he took 5 for 17 - the best figures by a South African bowler in men's T20Is - against Pakistan in Lahore.

Having worked on a number of slower balls and on varying his length, Pretorius found himself playing as a death-overs specialist in the 2021 T20 World Cup, and finished the tournament with nine wickets and the best strike rate - 9.7 - among bowlers who had bowled at least five overs.