Dale Steyn Credits Virat Kohli's Aggressiveness For The Success Of Indian Pace Bowling 1

The Indian pacers are now dominating in the world cricket and the veteran South African fast bowler Dale Steyn has credited the aggressive Indian captain Virat Kohli for this incredible progress in the pace bowling line-up.

Before the current generation of Indian cricket, the spinners were dominating in Indian cricket. Though the Indian pacers started to showcase their challenging calibre in international cricket since the ’90s, they were not dominating consistently, especially in India.

From the beginning of the 21st century, many talented Indian pacers entered in international cricket arena, few of them have successfully stretched their international career for a long time. But the present progress is remarkable as the current Indian pace bowling line-up is consistently guiding the national team to achieve the top success.

Dale Steyn, Indian pace bowling, Virat Kohli
Indian pacers – Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav (Photo Credit: BCCI)

While the present Indian pace bowling line-up has strong competition, each pacer is putting their mark in this field. Since January 2018, the Indian pacers are the most successful pace bowling line-up in Test cricket as they dismissed combinedly 274 batsmen. Meanwhile, at the same time (since January 2018), the Indian pacers have taken second-most wickets in international cricket among the other pace bowling line-ups.

Dale Steyn, Indian pace bowling, Virat Kohli
Indian pacers have combinedly taken 274 Test wickets since January 2018 (Image Credit: Google)

Dale Steyn talks about the success of Indian pace bowling

Recently, talking about this huge success in Indian pace bowling, the 36-year-old South African fast bowler Dale Steyn has credited the aggressiveness of the Indian captain Virat Kohli. He has also pointed out that the Indian pitches are now favouring the pacers more, unlike the previous regular spin-friendly pitches.

Dale Steyn, Indian pace bowling, Virat Kohli
Dale Steyn (Photo Credit: Getty Images)

Steyn claimed in an interview with CricTracker, “I think having an aggressive captain helps. We see pitches in India not spinning as much as before so that helps, sends a good message to the fast bowlers that they don’t just prepare pitches for spinners. Makes it worthwhile and you can see that through the years of IPL, the fast bowlers have gotten faster and stronger and now they have the opportunity to showcase their skills instead of being sidelined by spinning wickets.”

Former Test cricketer Dale Steyn is the most Test wicket-taker (439 wickets) for South Africa and second-most international wicket-taker (694 wickets) for South Africa.