To strike or not to strike, that is Steyn’s question

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

DALE Steyn is the highest ranked one-day bowler in the series between Australia and SA, but he sounds like he would rather be doing something else. Like playing a test match.

“I want to strike but at the same time I also want to contain, which means you’re bowling two different lengths,” Steyn said as SA prepared for the third match of the series, which is level at 1-1, in Canberra on Wednesday.

“If you want to strike you’ve got to bowl short and attack the body, and then you’ve got to pitch the ball up; hit the stumps, find the edge of the bat.

“If you want to contain, you bowl back of a length, you don’t give a guy room, you tuck him up and you don’t give him the freedom to hit you down the ground but also not short enough to pull you.

“It’s never a wicket-taking length. You’re kind of waiting for the batsman to make a mistake.”

Cricket’s premier fast bowler - he is ranked No. 1 in tests and No. 3 in ODIs - is not in the habit of waiting for things to happen. So he likes what he has been hearing from captain AB de Villiers.

“He wants me to go for it now,” Steyn said. “He’s given me licence to run in and try to hit the stumps, attack the body a little bit more.

“So I feel like I might go for a couple more runs, which is fine. Generally you’re bowling more boundary deliveries but you might pick up a couple more wickets, too.”

That’s good news for SA ahead of the match that could swing a series that will be over on Sunday. Wednesday’s winners will be in pole position to grab a victory from one of the remaining two games to decide the rubber.

Steyn is central to that cause. Morne Morkel’s career-best 5/21 won Sunday’s match in Perth, and Vernon Philander’s 4/45 was among the visitors’ few successes of Friday’s game, also at the WACA, which Australia won as comprehensively as SA claimed the spoils in the second. But Steyn, despite what seems an underwhelming series haul of 5/90, is the man who has set up those performances.

Perhaps because he does not rely on his reputation, perhaps because he seems to enjoy startling batsmen, Steyn continues to bound in to the bowling crease as if he is a young man in a hurry; as if he has a point to prove.

And he does: it’s the World Cup, stupid, and SA’s bid to finally win it next year.

“(More attacking bowling) is something we can experiment with now while we’re down here, before we go back to SA and come back for the World Cup,” Steyn said. “Wickets are what slows the game down quickly and also what wins you games.

“AB’s realised that and we’re trying to figure out a way to do that. For me, I can only do that by bowling two lengths - I’ve got to bowl full and short.”

The Aussies, it seems, will give Steyn time to make up his mind. All but the last few seconds of the six minutes Shane Watson spent talking to the press yesterday were devoted to next month’s test series against India - specifically about Michael Clarke, who could miss the rubber with an injured hamstring.

Clearly, the home side have moved on. It’s up to SA to take the gap they leave.