Dale Steyn is a doubtful starter yet again for the Proteas for Thursday’s final Test against India in Delhi.
Steyn hurt his groin in the first Test in Mohali, and he was unable to bowl for the rest of the game, while he was ruled out of the second and third Tests in Bangalore and Nagpur.
The World No 1-ranked bowler was hoping to recover in time for the Nagpur game, but now that the Proteas have lost the series 2-0, perhaps it would be better wrap him up in cotton wool before the long England tour that starts later this month with the Boxing Day Test in Durban.
“He’s still nursing a bit of a groin injury,” Proteas assistant coach Adrian Birrell said in a statement on Tuesday. “With a fast bowler, a groin injury takes a little time to get right.
“We need him 100% fit before we play him in a Test match. He’ll undergo another fitness Test tomorrow (Wednesday) so we can make sure he is 100% fit before making the decision on whether he will play on Thursday.”
It would be simple for the South Africans to just go through the motions for the last match of what will be a 72-day tour of India, which is not always the easiest place to travel in.
But Birrell said Hashim Amla’s side won’t be throwing the towel in just yet. The South African camp have gone to great lengths to familiarise themselves to some extent with the type of deliveries Indian spin twins Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja have sent down, which accounted for 40 out of the 50 Proteas wickets to fall so far.
And leg-spinner Amit Mishra took seven out of the remaining 10…
“They (Amla and Faf du Plessis) could have folded quite easily against a total that was really beyond us, but they showed good fight,” Birrell said. “Hopefully we can see that in the next Test, show that we’re here to fight. I liked Hashim’s words – win or lose, do it honourably. That was the case in the last Test and hopefully we’ll do that again in this Test.
“We are trying to recreate the rough in nets, taking a stump and putting it behind the footmarks, to try and replicate the match situation. We have Claude Henderson, who used to bowl left-arm spin – now he throws left-arm spin, which he is very accomplished at.
“I used to bowl leg-spin, so I bowl from a shortened run to try and simulate Mishra, I’m not even close, but we are trying. And then we have a bunch of guys who try to deliver balls like Ashwin, so we try to make it as similar to the match.”
@IndyCapeSport