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Steyn lauds 'fantastic bowling effort'

After watching Mustafizur Rahman make clever use of the cutter in Chittagong, Dale Steyn saw what he needed to do to get the most out of conditions in the second Test

Firdose Moonda
Firdose Moonda
30-Jul-2015
You may think that Dale Steyn, an international cricketer of 11 years, 80 Tests and 402 Test wickets, would have something to teach Mustafizur Rahman, an international cricketer of three months, two Test and four wickets. But on this tour, it has happened the other way around. After watching Mustafizur make clever use of the cutter in the Chittagong game, Steyn saw what he needed to do to get the most out of conditions in the second Test.
"We really try to seam the ball a lot more, that's the main thing," Steyn said. "There hasn't been a lot of purchase off the deck, but we saw the young left-arm quick that Bangladesh have, he's used his wrist very well and got a lot of movement off the deck. We took a note from that and realised that could be a strength of ours. If we can get a reverse we can move the ball through the air."
After a first Test in which Steyn found no swing or reverse-swing despite his best efforts - Allan Donald said he noticed Steyn was bowling with a scrambled seam as he would in one-day cricket rather than an upright one - Steyn found substantial reverse swing in the first afternoon of the second. Hashim Amla did not take the second new ball while Steyn reaped the rewards for what he had sown earlier.
With the new ball, Steyn created pressure with his usual weapons: pace and aggression. "The new ball has been nice and hard and hasn't offered a lot of swing. When the ball is really hard it's nice to rush batters. You get a little bit more bounce, you might splice a guy, you might rush him for pace," he explained.
That was how Steyn snagged Tamim Iqbal - his 400th Test scalp - who was lured by the full length, though Tamim's lazy shot selection did not help. "Tamim is an attacking batsman a kind of batsman that if you throw it up there he is going to throw his bat at it. There was just a little bit of bounce and I managed to find the edge."
But as the ball reached its mid-life, matters could have meandered. It got softer, so the extra bounce could not come into play and Steyn concentrated on stopping the scoring so that he could bring his second set of skills out later. "We didn't let them get away with the game. The economy rate never got higher than 2.8 around there in the entire game so the game just never got away from us and they weren't able to take the initiative and take the game forward."
Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel, to a lesser extent, were co-disciplinarians and apart from a brief period when Amla used spinners in tandem, his shrewd captaincy ensured one of them was always on hand to ensure Bangladesh could not get away with too much against Simon Harmer and the part-timers. Among South Africa's bit-part bowlers, who are now doing well enough to be called all-rounders, Dean Elgar found the most turn, while JP Duminy enjoyed the most success.
Their combined effort was an exercise in what happens when you win the waiting game. "Everybody bowled well. Vernon bowled well and Morne toiled really hard and was able to get wickets. The economy rate is going to be the main thing and patience, patience, patience, was the key," Steyn said.
"I think Bangladesh have gotten better over the years, but overall we were probably the more patient side at the end of the day and that's why our economy rate was where it was and they weren't able to get away from us. Our spare bowlers managed to maintain that pressure and bags a wicket, because the patience just kind of runs out. Then you bring the quicks back on and it's bang-bang, like it was at the end. So it's all-round been a fantastic bowling effort."
But it was not just bang-bang - Steyn got the old ball moving but using "the seam get revs on it and try to get the ball to reverse swing," and asking questions Bangladesh's lower-order did not know how to answer. "We always knew that once we get them to six down their lower order batters don't tend to like hanging around." It's not wrapped up yet but that was the initial goal."
South Africa will aim to achieve that early on the second day so that they are batting before conditions become too difficult to do so. If they do, Mustafizur will have the chance to show whether he has learnt anything from Steyn in return.

Firdose Moonda is ESPNcricinfo's South Africa correspondent