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Thursday March 28, 2024

Underperforming Steyn looks to breathe fire against Pakistan

AUCKLAND: Many believed Dale Steyn will turn out to be the most destructive bowler in the ongoing World Cup.But with five wickets from four World Cup games, the world’s most feared pacer is yet to really make his presence felt in the 14-nation spectacle.However, the South African announced on the

By our correspondents
March 07, 2015
AUCKLAND: Many believed Dale Steyn will turn out to be the most destructive bowler in the ongoing World Cup.
But with five wickets from four World Cup games, the world’s most feared pacer is yet to really make his presence felt in the 14-nation spectacle.
However, the South African announced on the eve of their Pool B game against Pakistan here at Eden Park on Saturday (today) that his best will come soon.
“I don’t think I’ve bowled too badly. I haven’t taken the wickets that I want to take, but that’s the World Cup,” he told reporters here on Friday.
“I feel if we make our way all the way to the final, I’m due to have a good game somewhere in there.”
Steyn said that over the year he has learned a lot from pace legends like Pakistan’s Waqar Younis and his own compatriot Alan Donald.
“It’s always great to work with the legends of cricket. Alan is one of my biggest heroes when I was growing up. I loved watching him bowl. It’s always nice to sit in the changing room and talk about cricket.
“I loved having Waqar during the IPL. IPL is a great kind of tournament because there is so much happening with the bat, but there is a lot to practice with the ball. There is a slower ball that’s coming into play. There is the yorker. There is how to bowl in these situations. So I think Waqar was learning a lot from the players, being a player that never played in a Twenty20 tournament.”
Steyn agreed that new rules and regulations have made bowling even tougher these days.
“It’s always tough to be a bowler, isn’t it? All the rules are against us. But great players find a way to take wickets, and it’s just something that we have to do.
“It doesn’t matter whether the track is green or flat or the field is big or small, we’ll find a way. The game will always evolve. It’s just the life of a bowler, I guess. And batters will serve to find ways to score runs with field changes and so on. So it really doesn’t matter. But I do feel for the bowlers. There have been some massive scores scored in this World Cup so far. There are stats that in the last World Cup there weren’t even four scores or three scores over 300, and already in this World Cup we’ve seen scores over 400, so a lot of runs.”