Published: Sep 19, 2016, 04:48 PM (IST)
Edited: Sep 19, 2016, 04:48 PM (IST)
South African batsman Stiaan Van Zyl celebrates his 29th birthday on Monday. Van Zyl was born in Cape Town on September 19, 1987. Van Zyl has been in and out of the South African Test side. However, his international career started off well as he scored his maiden Test ton on his debut against West Indies at Centurion in 2014. He has not managed to score even a fifty since then. Van Zyl in his 12-match Test career so far has played in Bangladesh and most recently in India. However, he played his last Test in the series against New Zealand at Centurion, which South Africa won by 204 runs.
Van Zyl will hope to make it to the Proteas squad for the upcoming Test series against Australia Down Under. He is however a prolific run-scorer in the domestic arena. He has a First-Class average of close to 43. Van Zyl has never played in the limited-overs fixture for South Africa. But he averages over 37 is List A cricket and 24.70 in T20 cricket. Van Zyl is also a decent bowler, having already picked up 48 First-Class and 18 List A wickets with his medium pacers. Incidentally, van Zyl initially wanted to become a bowler, but he chose batting over bowling eventually. But, he is a handy option for his skipper to have. He was also a right-handed batsman growing up, but his father made him bat left-handed. Van Zyl admires southpaws like Kumar Sangakkara, Matthew Hayden and Michael Hussey.
His favourite cricketers include Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, but among the current cricketers he is fond of Yuvraj Singh and Shikar Dhawan.
