London: South Africa’s fast bowler Dale Steyn has had a long battle with injuries halting his successful run in the game, multiple times. The pacer himself admitted that at times, he did get angry and felt like that everything is conspiring against him.
“I did! Absolutely. I walked into the dressing room and I was so angry. I just lost my mind a little bit. You don’t want to walk off the field. Records please other people, but to walk off in the middle of the game and leave my team to do the hard work and win games one bowler short- that’s not a bad thing to do,” Steyn told ESPNcricinfo.
The pacer made a comeback in the series against Pakistan in the month of December last year in which he surpassed Shaun Pollock’s record of 421 wickets to become the leading wicket-taker for South Africa in the Test Format.
He said that the record was made a big deal by the supporters of cricket all over the world. He, however, admitted that the hype was unavoidable.
“It really is unavoidable. I’ve never really chased records or anything like that. I just kind of play. When I play, things do happen quite naturally. But that 400 and Polly’s record were the two toughest wickets. Because that was the first time I was made aware of something that had as much gravity as it did. Everywhere I went, it was like: You’re one game away. You’re going to break Polly’s record. And then it ended up taking like two years”.
The right-arm bowler still believes that the pace is an essential component of his game and bowling above 140 Kmph is an important tool to add variety to his armoury.
“Speed is obviously everything. Especially playing in this team. It’s key that I’m bowling over 140kph an hour. I’ve got some skill. I’ve been around long enough to know how to bowl an inswinger, away swinger, and a cutter and a this and a that. But if someone hits you for six, all anyone really wants to do – you can ask any spinner – is run in and bowl a 150kph bouncer. And I can do that. Unless I can do that, I’m like everybody else”.
Dale Steyn remains an important part of the South African side and with World Cup approaching, he would be hoping to take his team all the way through the prestigious tournament.
World Cup 2019 is slated to be held from May 30 to July 14 in England with South Africa playing the opening match of the tournament against the hosts.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]