Just a couple of day back, the South African captain AB De Villiers raised his voice over the issue of sledging in cricket. He even revealed some of the incidents he faced as a youngster targeting England and Australia as he said “When we play England, it’s pretty verbal. I also remember touring Australia in 2006 as a youngster, with the likes of Warne and McGrath and Gilly behind the stumps. Still, that was nowhere near what we received in 2014. Australia certainly made a conscious effort to be verbally over the top”.
With South Africa tour Australia around the corner, there was no way that an Australian player would bear this comment and it was the turn of senior bowler, Peter Siddle, who came up with an answer to this taking a dig at South African team after the comments of AB De Villiers “That’s what I sort of giggled at … it’s a totally different side. They played an inexperienced (Australian) side over there in that one-day series, they’re good comments but it puts more pressure on them … talking a big game puts more pressure on them.”
Siddle went on to hit the African team at the area where it hurts them the most. He took a jibe at chokers tag of the South African team which have a permanent spot on African team jersey from past many-many years. It is a permanent issue for this team which prevails here from past many years, Semi-final of 2015 World Cup being the latest example of it.
The cricket fraternity is well aware of this habit of the South African team and is never reluctant to press this nerves whenever needed.
Australians being Australians have already started playing mind games even before the start of the series. Siddle also targetted the young bowler Kagiso Rabada citing the history of few young players who came to Australia with big hopes but couldn’t perform according to the stature “It’ll be interesting to see how he goes over here in a big series. There will be a fair bit of pressure on him, in the past, other countries have brought out players like that — you sort of think of Steve Finn a few Ashes series ago when they brought him out.
“He might have taken a few wickets but he did leak a lot of runs. There was a lot of pressure on him, that’s the sort of thing that we could look to do to Rabada. It means the other bowlers have to come back and keep bowling spells,” said Siddle.
Peter Siddle may not be part of this series as he is still recovering from an injury. However, Australia will get services of Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazelwood who were given a rest for ODIs versus South Africa where the protea’s swept the series by a margin of 5-0.