Dale Steyn's debut in International cricket

Dale Steyn

South Africa’s Dale Steyn made his Test match debut in December 2004 against England at Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Steyn was brought into the South African Test side as the first replacement pacer after Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini, both of whom had five plus years of Test match cricket experience at the time.

Steyn’s first contribution to South African cricket however came with his bat, when he struck a six off the bowling of Ashely Giles, before being dismissed by Giles off the very next delivery.

Chasing South Africa’s total of 337, England’s openers Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Strauss got off to a flying start. The pair put on a commanding opening stand of 152 in 42 overs when Steyn struck.

Steyn knocked Trescothick’s middle and leg stumps back with a fast in-swinger, thus giving South Africa their first wicket of the match. It would take Steyn a further 84 overs before he scalped his next victim, Simon Jones, England’s number 10 batsman.

Inspite of the good start, Steyn had an ordinary series, and after a particularly poor showing in the fourth Test match, he was dropped for the fifth and final Test of the series in favour of right-arm-fast medium bowler Andre Nel.

The following year, Steyn made his limited overs debut for South Africa. Steyn was picked to play for the Africa XI squad in the three match series against Asia XI in South Africa. Steyn had a forgetful game till the penultimate over of the match, when he dismissed the last batsman of the Asia XI side, Ashish Nehra with the first ball of his final over to secure the match for Africa XI by 2 runs and thereby also opened his wicket tally in One Day cricket.

Steyn played his first One Day International for the South African cricket team against Australia at Melbourne the following year in January 2006.

Dale Steyn is repsected around the cricketing world for his pinpoint accuracy as well as for his pace and his aggressive bowling skills. Steyn has made a name for himself around the cricketing world for dominating batsmen, and is known the world over as the spearhead of the South African bowling line-up.

He has 375 Test wickets to his name from 74 Test matches and 125 ODI wickets from 82 ODI games.