Dale Steyn bagged five wickets in the second innings to lead South Africa to win in the first Test at Kennington Oval © Getty Images
By CricketCountry Staff
London: Jul 26, 2012
South Africa pacer Dale Steyn on Thursday revealed that playing in the Indian subcontinent, especially during the Indian Premier League, helped his side’s bowlers to adapt better on slow tracks such as the one on which they played against England at Kennington Oval.
“Luckily we play a lot of cricket in the subcontinent so we are used to the fact that we are going to play on some slow wickets.
“We adapted well, I don't know if it's the fact the we play a lot of IPL cricket, but we managed to bowl straight at the stumps, when playing in the sub (subcontinent) you've got to attack the stumps,” Steyn said.
The right-arm pacer who took five-for in the second innings to lead South Africa to win, said, "We all work together well as a unit, we complement each other nicely. The bowlers are always trying to figure what are the difficult areas for batsmen and who better to speak to than someone like Hashim who faced (529) deliveries on it, he will tell you what lines and lengths were most difficult for him. Then we aim to hit those."
"There were a lot of extras, a lot of leg-byes, because we were going at the stumps, we hit the pads, we knew that's how we'd get wickets with lbws.
"After the first innings we had six appeals that if given would have been 'umpires call' for lbw,” he was quoted as saying by Cricket 365.
