In uncertain times, with South African cricket hurting from a mass talent exodus to the Kolpak route in UK, young wicketkeeper batsman Kyle Verreynne's comments that his "ultimate goal" is to play Test cricket gives a feeling of reassurance for the Proteas' future.

Verreynne made his debut in the recent ODI series against Australia and scored 101 runs, including a fifty as the Proteas blanked the arch-rivals 3-0. The 22-year-old was rewarded with call-up to the next series versus India, which unfortunately got suspended because of COVID-19 outbreak.

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"For me, red-ball cricket is really enjoyable and one of my ultimate goal is to play Test cricket, so to be able to put in a performance like that, scoring two centuries in one four-day game was something that I was really proud of," ANI quoted Verreynne as saying. 

"Obviously having played in the one-day (nation) side now, I'd like to firstly work hard and keep my place there, but looking further ahead, I definitely want to play Test cricket."

Verreynne made his first-class debut at the age of 18 for domestic franchise Cape Cobras and has since scored 2,587 runs at an average of 50.7 in 40 games, including 3 hundreds, 17 fifties. 

In the meantime, however, he can relish the fact that he has made such a fine start to his career. "I think obviously my international debut in Paarl against Australia is so far the highlight of my career," he said. "It's something that you dream of and you think about so much growing up and to finally get there means a lot to me and doing reasonably well, it was really special."

(Inputs from ANI)