Dale Steyn sat mesmerised in Rawalpindi, taking notes mentally, he said, as Shane Bond spoke incisively on the art of fast bowling from Christchurch. When it was Steyn's turn to speak, Bond chuckled or nodded at an anecdote or insight. As the Champions Trophy played out in Pakistan and the UAE, the two bowling greats turned coaches unpacked their years of knowledge of the game over a freewheeling chat on everything fast bowling.

What does it take to be a high-impact fast bowler in white-ball cricket?
Dale Steyn: The game has changed a lot, honestly, with T20 cricket. And what I mean by that is the way batters approach the game these days. So you've got to look at bowlers slightly differently - gone are the days of Shaun Pollock running in bowling ten overs for 30 runs and getting away with it. That doesn't happen too many times these days.

So when I'm looking for bowlers, especially in the [T20] leagues where I do a little bit of coaching, I'm looking for the guys that have got the ability to take wickets - massive wicket-taking mentality. That way you can break up the game, break partnerships, you can start afresh and then you can go back to your basics of bowling - trying to bowl as many dot balls as you can at the top of off stump, with one that nips back in for an lbw or bowled, and one that goes away that finds the outside edge.

You look at guys like [Jasprit] Bumrah, he's probably the all-in-all package, him and KG Rabada. They've got the ability to come and bowl at any particular time in a game and take a wicket. Those guys are like gold. So if you can produce more bowlers like that, we'll start to see our fast-bowling stock get so much better. It's not just about bowling 155kph these days or having tens of different types of skills, it's really about being able to break the game open when your captain needs it.

Play 33:35

"A fast bowler should be like a Ferrari"

Shane Bond: Batting has advanced so quickly, particularly with the freedom of strokeplay. Bowling's sort of been lagging a little bit, and I suppose that's why you've seen such big scores, approaching 300 [in T20s] and 400 in ODIs. So that, from my perspective, means a change of mindset for bowlers: how do I add additional skills to my game? How do I think outside the box a little bit? There's still massive scope for bowlers to do things slightly differently, for captains to change the way they use their bowlers and their fields.

In white-ball cricket, I agree you need bowlers who can take wickets, but bowlers have been taught since a young age that success means wickets. And sometimes you've got to get away from that and think about… well, the team that wins the cricket game in the short formats is the team that scores the most runs. And so, yes, there's wickets, but there's also times where you have to park ego to the side, you have to do a job for the team and go for as few possible runs as you can.

As a coach I spent a lot of time earlier in my career talking about the powerplay and the death, [but now] I put a lot of focus on the middle overs: how are we going to bowl as a collective group? What's your role within that middle phase of a game? How do you use your fields? How do you do that to take wickets, and what are the tactics through that phase of the game that can make a difference? And I still think there's plenty of scope for bowlers and a bowling group to make an impact there.

How do you inject that wicket-taking mentality into bowlers with skill?
Steyn: One of the things that I always tell the bowlers I'm working with is that they get one fielder and the captain gets the rest. It's kind of like when you were playing in the backyard with your mates and you had that one fielder that was a tree, and you knew that if you bowled to [the batter's] legs, he'd hit the ball towards the tree. And that's how I kind of see we should be playing, especially white-ball cricket: when I'm running in and I'm going to let go of this ball, where in my mind's eye do I see this ball going? At times I've got a wicket-taking mentality where I feel I'm going to nick him off, and I see the ball going to first slip. So you have to carry a first slip. That's my one fielder.

Once you get bowlers thinking like that - where's this particular ball going to go - then they've got more control as to where they're going to bowl and how they're going to bowl. And sometimes when that wicket comes, it doesn't come by fluke or by chance. It comes because they've actually seen it, they've produced it and they've got the skill to be able to actually execute and get that wicket.

What is your experience of coaching bowlers - the challenge of teaching them when to use that wicket-taking mentality and when they've got to buy into just keeping the runs down?
Bond: I still think in one-day cricket you can bowl with a wicket-taking mentality with a defensive field as well. Sometimes it makes it easier, because you're not going for runs. Sometimes, particularly through those middle overs, as a bowler, success is always defined by wickets, so you come back and in six balls try all sorts of stuff to get a wicket. And if you bowl like that, bowler after bowler after bowler, all of a sudden the runs start to leak and your ten-over block, that's gone for 70 and you haven't got any [wickets]. So it's sort of understanding that, look, if you've got good bowlers, if I come on and I go for four [runs] and my mate goes for four, eventually the batsmen, they are going to do something and it's going to create an opportunity.

In the really short format, if you look at spinners, their wicket-taking mentality is to just grenade the ball up, throw a loopy one and hope to get a wicket. And often now, it just gets whacked for six. So there's scope for captains to think about how they chop and change their bowlers. The [2023] World Cup final comes to mind, with India and Australia and the way [Australia] did that tactically. We don't often see the short-ball plan used in one-day cricket, yet it's the same rules as Test cricket. There's plenty of opportunities, it's just [about] continuing to get bowlers to upskill and use the analysis to come up with those good plans.

On the T20 circuit, are there any prominent examples of bowlers you've seen who understood what it takes to grow into an effective fast bowler?
Steyn: I work in the SA20 [as bowling coach with Sunrisers Eastern Cape]. We've had good [uncapped] bowlers. Some have actually gone on to play for [national] teams. Brydon Carse is playing for England. [Richard] Gleeson might be picked up in the IPL.

Play 15:35

What does it take to be a successful fast bowler in modern-day white-ball cricket?

The point is that we've tried to tell them, the guys bowling in South Africa, that we want to stay away from the slot, we want to stay away from half-volleys. And there's more than enough happening at that six- to-eight-metre Test match kind of length. Gaurav [Sundararaman], our stats guy, who used to work at ESPNcricinfo, he'll tell you that our bowlers are the guys that have hit that six-eight metre length the most of all the bowlers over three years at the SA20. And it's no surprise why Marco Jansen, Ottneil Baartman have been among the highest wicket-takers.

So that was a very simple plan: we are going to bowl hard lengths for as long as we can. And when we are under pressure, yes, you have got space for your yorker, yes, let's use that bouncer. But the whole plan was just hard lengths. Pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure. And we were able to get wickets. And I've seen guys like Jansen actually grow in the international scene just from doing that in a domestic competition.

Bond: I agree. I can think of someone I've worked with, like Trent Boult, who's obviously a brilliant left-arm swing bowler. Most of his wickets too, Dale, came off that sort of six-metre length. When Boulty challenged both the inside and outside of the bat, then he was most successful.

You look at someone like Shaheen Shah Afridi, who's sort of still searching for wickets, bowling that really full length, and at the moment he's going for a lot of runs. That was the difference between perhaps someone like him and a Trent Boult, who understands bringing the length back, thinking about having the ball actually hit to where he can protect. That's why he continues to have such success over such a long period of time.

Stephen Fleming once said that you have to try and get bowlers to be instinctively good themselves. A bowler like Bumrah, as we keep saying, knows what to bowl at what point. Is it something that can easily be taught instinctively - to know what to bowl when?
Bond: There's always an assumption as an international bowler: he knows what he's doing. I think 70% of bowlers don't know what they are doing. And when you are under extreme pressure, actually you have to dumb down stuff. And I say to my captains, don't ever be afraid to tell a bowler what to bowl and then manoeuvre the field for them. Because sometimes just the simplicity of the task makes a massive difference. If you look at Bumrah, who's the best bowler in the world, he's that combination of, obviously, skill, [but he] works really hard, does his preparation on the batsman and has the ability to use his instinct as well. And when you combine those four things, that's why he is No. 1 in the world.

"I have seen international players today who will bowl six balls without changing the field once, and they've played for ten years at the highest level. I'm just pulling my hair out, thinking, can you not see what's going to happen?" Dale Steyn

A lot of bowlers don't have those four things. So the importance of that captain is critical. I don't like quotes like, "I just bowl my best ball", "I've just got to be aggressive". You have to do some work. There is a baseline you have to know - that this is the sort of basic plan I have to attack a batsman with. And then you reflect and you learn. Because if you don't do that and you don't learn, then you reach your ceiling.

Steyn: I have seen international players today that will run in and bowl six balls without changing the field once, and they've played for ten years at the highest level. And sometimes I sit there and I'm pulling my hair out and I just think, can you not see what's going to happen? So I don't know if it comes instinctively to many bowlers, but I feel like guys that want to work on it will spend the time with the analysts, they will spend the time talking after the game to batters, figuring out what are the things they can pick up in a batter. Is he spinning the bat a couple more times? Does that mean that he is moving across? Does it mean that he's going to lap? How can I stay one step ahead? And maybe the way to learn is to actually just have conversations. Really, you've just got to be chatting, chatting, chatting.

And there's a lot of guys that do it and then there're some guys that just opt not to do it, but have a really good captain who sees and reads the game well and does it for them. The problem with that is that they don't often take that captain with them to other teams that they play for. And that's sometimes where you see them get found out.

Kids grow up wanting to bowl fast, wanting to be mean, to try and hit the batter, but Bondy, you've spoken about parking that ego. Is that the first challenge when you have to try and condition a fast bowler into understanding his job, when it is very different from the idea of what he wanted to do growing up?
Bond: There's a couple of parts to it. I have a 16-year-old son who wants to be a cricketer. So he and his friends are always talking to me about fast bowling, and there's a couple of things that always stand out. They will want me to have a look at an action and ask me if it's safe or not. The second part is, well, how do I bowl faster? And I always, when I talk to bowlers like those kids, say I wish I could run 100 metres in ten seconds, but I could never have done that. Everyone has a ceiling or a natural ability when it comes to bowling fast.

Bond says Trent Boult's success has come from being able to bowl hard lengths repetitively and challenge both edges of the bat Peter Meecham / © Getty Images

It's not about talent, I tell my son. It's about work ethic, training hard every day, being really purposeful when you are training, working on your skills, because ultimately, if you are going to be a really good bowler, you have to be able to put the ball where you want more often than not. And if you can do something with the ball on top of that, then obviously that's ideal.

Now in terms of the ego side of things, particularly as the format gets shorter, the one thing I tell my players is, there's only one stat that I care about and that's whether we win or lose. That's what we are judged on. People remember winners and you want to win. The fun part about being a player is lifting trophies and being in finals and playing those big games. In order to get there, you have to buy into that collective team ethos. Obviously you take wickets and you have plans to take wickets on certain balls, but unless you work collectively together, it can all come undone. Sometimes it's difficult in franchise cricket, in particular, to do that; a little bit easier at the international game where you sort of have that commonality.

Steyn: You talk about the ego side. I also grew up hitting a couple guys in the head and I thought it was quite fun (laughs). I was doing it when I was 14, when I started playing club cricket. I had this incredible feeling of power, for the first time in my life, where I was a 14-year-old and wherever I went outside of cricket, I was like, yes sir, thank you sir - very kind and very gentleman-like. And then when I got onto a cricket field, I was playing against some of these same-aged men, I was hitting them in the head and I was flooring them. And now all of a sudden, as this 14-year-old, you have this incredible power that you never really realised you had.

And I kind of ran with that when I got into provincial cricket. Daryll Cullinan was one of my first captains and he noticed that. I think he had a bit of a vendetta against a lot of ex-players and he was like, "I'm going to use this youngster to take out all these guys." And that was great because when I started playing Test cricket, I used a lot of those skills. Out of nowhere I would be like, "Okay Graeme [Smith], I'm coming around the wicket. I'm going to try and rough him up a little bit. I'm going to try and hurt him a little bit and then I'm going to go back over and I'm going to try and take some wickets."

Everyone's road to how they play the game is different. And Bondy is so right - 99% of us have this idea that you are going to knock guys over, you are going to knock the poles over of the best players in the world, you are going to hit them in the head. But then, once you get to the highest level, these guys are really, really, really good. And it's not that simple. But then other guys just have the knack of being able to do that, and there's only a handful of them - Mitch Johnson against England [in 2013-14] and a couple other guys. It doesn't happen all the time. Everybody normally has to go into this kind of bracket and this is how we actually play. But every now and then you get a captain like Daryll Cullinan and it was quite fun.

"I say to my captains, don't ever be afraid to tell a bowler what to bowl and then manoeuvre the field for them. Because sometimes that makes a massive difference" Shane Bond

You have cricketers now who primarily want to make a name playing franchise cricket, but being fast sometimes goes against you. Like Umran Malik. Everyone thought he was the next big thing, but he's gone from a 150-160kph X-factor bowler to one who can't control his pace. He doesn't have variations. What is the challenge when you get someone with such raw ability and you don't see him grow into an effective bowler?
Steyn: That's a difficult thing. Sometimes you get thrown into the scene like the IPL. You come into the ground and there's 60,000 people screaming and you feel like, oh, I have to run in and I have to bowl 160kph an hour, which is great, but if it goes against the game plan and it goes against the run of play, you are going to go for 60-70 [runs] and that's not going to do your team any good. It's not going to do you any good.

Come a couple games later you might find yourself out of the team, and a season later you might not even find yourself in any of the franchises. So you really have to harness that speed and make sure that you are using it well. Just like a Ferrari has six gears, you don't have to use all six gears. The Ferrari still can operate in first, second, and third, and fast bowlers are much the same. They have got to be able to know when to use their gears. If they are just trying to go in sixth gear all the time, they are doing themselves in a little bit.

Can you actually teach bowlers to use gears effectively?
Steyn: Everyone should be able to do that. You learn that from Test cricket. That's where I learned a lot of it from. Some days I rock up there on day three, and it's just like I'm running into the wind, my legs are sore, I'm a bit stiff and I'm just like, okay, I need to operate roundabout here to be successful today. I always knew what speed I didn't want to come below, and that was roughly around 138-140kph. [In the period when I was] at my fastest, I didn't want to be slower than that.

And then on the day that I was feeling good and I had a bit of wind behind me, then I was like, okay, cool, I'm going to ramp it up now, 145, maybe if I'm lucky, 150-plus. But you learn that through playing Test cricket and having the whole day and how you manage 18 to 20 overs a day. Guys these days, when they are playing and they're practising for T20, they might only bowl 12 to 16 balls at a training session and be like, "Thanks coach, I'm out, I'm done." How are you going to learn how to go through those gears if all you have done is bowl 12 balls and you've said, "I'm out, I'm going to go and get an ice bath or a massage"?

Steyn: "Most of us fast bowlers have this idea that you are going to knock guys over, you are going to hit them in the head. But then, once you get to the highest level, it's not that simple" © AFP

Bond: That's what made Dale such a great bowler, that ability to turn it on and lift up that intensity. I found as a bowler, my role in the New Zealand team was to bowl quick and I didn't really dial it down, and I suffered injuries for it and I didn't play as long as I should have. But that's what I loved about watching someone like Dale or Richard Hadlee - that ability in the moment to grab it.

And then you come back to what we are doing now as coaches. People will often ask, "Well, how do you coach a Bumrah or some of these guys?" They are about the conversations you are having. You are talking about gears, you are talking about body language and how they present themselves. There are the little subtleties that you can have an influence on in a current player, and pass on the lessons that you learned, to hope their growth will go up at a much greater rate.

So Dale's right, there's a lot of talk now about the bowling loads. I remember as a kid I used to bowl lots of overs, and today there's limits and stuff like that. And it's that real balancing act. Everyone can handle different loads, but you have to be able to bowl to get better. You have to bowl. And even if you have to drop the intensity down in the nets and bowl longer, then that's still going to help you develop your skills over a period of time.

There's divided opinion on whether bowlers should be made to play red-ball cricket because that's not necessarily going to take them to the next level, or make them advance in T20 cricket. Or maybe their body won't even allow them to play red-ball cricket. So how do you develop control as a bowler when the challenge is to try and play long-form cricket, which is supposed to give you control?
Bond: Great question! Everybody's tolerance for bowling is different. An Adam Milne could handle 30 overs a week. A Neil Wagner could handle 60. You only learn that through riding it down and working it out once you have an injury: how much am I doing? There's all that science that goes in behind that as well. You can't tell a player what format they want to play. Most players would love to earn their Test cap. Test cricket, I still think is the pinnacle, but obviously the compromise often now is injury.

Each individual has to make their own decisions. But what I do know is, the more you bowl in the middle in situations for those longer spells, you sort of work out how to self-correct. When things aren't going right, you sort of learn the technical things have to do to get yourself back on track. And in the end, Dale and I will come and go as coaches, so you have to self-coach, to understand how you tick, what gets the best out of you. And if you can do that, then you can become a very, very good bowler.

"Bowlers have been taught since a young age that success means wickets. And sometimes you've got to get away from that" Dale Steyn

Dale, you are working with so many bowlers who aren't playing long-form cricket, or just cannot play yet, but they're expected to have that control when needed on a big stage.
Steyn: My coaching career has been strange. I haven't really managed to catch one of the good bowlers just yet! (chuckles) And with respect to the guys that I have worked with, a lot of them actually play just T20 cricket, almost. Marco Jansen's probably the one guy that is playing all three formats that I'm quite close with. He has potential in the longest format. I can see what his worth is going to be over years and years to come. So he doesn't really have to worry about many things, but it's just about having a chat to him and talking to him about what I feel he needs to do sometimes.

But I haven't managed to catch some of those guys that have played a lot of Test matches, from a Boulty to a Rabada or somebody like that. I've got a lot of these T20 specialists and I kind of just let them do their thing, really. I'm more of a cheerleader when I go to these games. They know what works for them, they know how their body operates. I just try and pick up on all of those little things and then I'm just reminding them: do this, do that. And I make sure that I make these environments that allow them to succeed.

Let's talk about experienced bowlers who find ways to reinvent themselves or stay relevant. For instance, Pat Cummins, who seems to have had a second coming in his T20 skills when it was thought there was no way he could be as effective a white-ball bowler, or IPL bowler in particular, as he was in red-ball cricket. That's changed, hasn't it?
Bond: That to me is the role of the coaches. You talk about the Boults and the Bumrahs and these guys, and I always go, look, my role as a coach is to try and help somebody get better. Otherwise I don't really serve a purpose. And one of the great frustrations I had as a player was, the better I got, the less I got coached. And so you were left to your own devices and it was sort of, oh, he knows what he's doing.

And having had a level of success, you can become quite stubborn in the way that you do things. John Bracewell was my best coach, and the reason he was is, he challenged me. If I would take some wickets but I didn't bowl well, he would say, "Look, you haven't bowled well and these are the reasons why", and that would really get my goat and I would want to prove a point, which was the art of coaching.

Umran Malik took 22 wickets in his breakthrough IPL season in 2022, five in 2023 and none at all in 2024 when he played a solitary match © BCCI

And so now with those sorts of bowlers, you have got to be curious. What are the skills we can add? And it can be subtle things, like Bumrah's is around his body language, about his planning and preparation, about how you do all those things to just get better every year. With Boulty it would be things like, his run-up angle would get wider as he got on. So it's little habits that you are trying to pick up or technical changes or little habits that kick in that you think you are trying to rectify.

So my job is to push these players and that's what I really enjoyed last year, at Rajasthan [Royals], with Ravichandran Ashwin. He's a super-curious bowler, he was always looking for something new, prepared to give it a go in the nets and then he'd take it out into the middle. And that's what I'm trying to do as a coach, go, "I want you to develop some new skills or a new feel, practise it and then take it into the middle and let's see what happens." And then sometimes with bowlers there's a bit of a fear of what if it doesn't go right? And I'm like, well, what if it goes right? How exciting is that if you've got a new tool in your toolbox that you can pull out? And to me that's the fun part of coaching.

Ishant Sharma said that for a long time several coaches told him, we need you to try and go full, but you drop pace, so that's what you need to fix. Ishant said, but I didn't understand what the solution is. I know what the problem is. And then he worked with Jason Gillespie, who said, I need you to try and hit the batter's knee as hard and fast as you can. And he said, something as simple as that made me understand So, how do bowlers receive information? Do even experienced bowlers perhaps sometimes need to be told in a certain way? And there's always the language barrier when you come to India.
Bond: There's two parts and Dale will talk about this. The trust between you and the bowler. You walk into a franchise, you might have ten days before you start doing work and it's a lot [to ask] to put all their faith in you. So you have got to develop that relationship over a period of time. You have got a whole lot of data now, and as long as you do your diligence and there's enough of the data, it will tell a story. And so you can present them some stuff that says, "Hey look, this is what I've noticed. What do you see?" And then sometimes it just takes time.

I remember when Lasith Malinga's pace was dropping down, he was getting hit a little bit, and I had sort of talked to him about bowling round the wicket - just with his angle it would be challenging. And I talked about it with him for two seasons and he was like, "Nah, I'm not doing that." And then I had a chat with Mahela [Jayawardene, Mumbai Indians head coach] and so Mahela went and had a conversation, and Mali was struggling a little bit and then he thought, well, I've got to a point where I have got to try something else. And he did and he had some success.

"If I took some wickets but I didn't bowl well, John Bracewell would say, 'Look, you haven't bowled well and these are the reasons why', and that would really get my goat and I would want to prove a point - which was the art of coaching" Shane Bond

So sometimes when a bowler is struggling and they are looking for something new, it takes a little bit of persistence with a coach. I don't think as a coach you can come in and go, "This is the way you've got to do it." Sometimes you just have to drop hints and then you have to sit back and just see what unravels. But what I always encourage my players [to do] is be really clear about what you are practising. Be prepared to try something new and then go and give it a go in a game and you will get my backing to do that. Whether it works or not, to me that's an exciting part as a player, to be able to see if have got something else to offer.

Steyn: I'm picking up all these things secretly, I'm writing all these things down. (laughs)

Data is another interesting one. Enough coaches have said you have to be really careful with how much information you give different individuals, as sometimes you could really mess with their head. How do you know where to draw the line?
Bond: You have a continuum. You have some players who will want none and some players who will want lots. And it's understanding their personality type. So as a coach, when I have my meetings, I try and give them what I think is the bare bones. And then if you want more, you can go and get that. And if you don't want any more, that's okay.

And then in and around your bowler on the field, you put some support with the captain or another bowler, so that when the pressure really comes on, they've got someone to come over and sort of control that mental space, offer them a little bit of feedback around what the plan was, just keep them calm, help them make decisions, and then at certain points you've got to trust your gut.

So it's a combination of you knowing some of the data and you also have to blend it together with trusting your gut. Trusting your gut sort of means you get a feel for what's going to happen. You watch enough and play enough cricket to go, "I just feel like this batsman's going to go, so what am I going to do to counter that?" And I suppose it's like a batsman premeditating with a bowler who bowls short, and then goes, "I think this bowler is now going to bowl full, and now they are being hit, they are going to bowl slow, and then they are going to bowl short."

Bond: "As a coach, sometimes you just have to drop hints and then you have to sit back and just see what unravels" © Mumbai Indians

Ambati Rayudu once said that to him the role of the analyst was to prepare him on what to expect.
Steyn: I'd go to our stats guy, Gaurav, and ask him something as simple as: How many slower balls do people bowl? What's the average? I'll use a small example. [During the IPL] He came to me and said Umran Malik was bowling on average one slower ball every 24 balls that he bowled, whereas Bhuvi [Bhuvneshwar Kumar] was bowling 12 slower balls every 24 balls that he bowled. And then you look at the one slower ball that Umran Malik bowled and the strike rate for that was like 30 or whatever it was. And then it was just about going and suggesting to him [Umran], "Listen, this is what you are bowling. You are only bowling one slower ball and all the other ones are going for runs. Can you try and just add one more in and let's see if that makes a difference?"

And this is quite a funny story because I went and I said that to him and he said, "Oh, that's a great point. Thank you very much. If Bhuvi is doing it, I'll try it." And we were sitting in a game in Mumbai and it was the perfect time for him [Umran] to bowl a slow ball. And he ran in, and I turned around and I said to Murali [Muthiah Muralidaran, Sunrisers Hyderabad assistant coach], "I think he's going to bowl a slower ball." And he ran in and he bowled a yorker and he knocked the stumps out all over the place.

And the camera turned and it pointed towards me and Murali as if the coaches had come up with this amazing thing. And I was like, you know what, sometimes the master is the guy that's actually on the field. I'm telling him to bowl a slower ball. And he ran and bowled a gas 155kph yorker and knocked the stumps out of the ground. So sometimes the stats don't really matter. But there's definitely a place for it in helping players know what other players are also doing that helps them get better. And in that case, it's something that Umran Malik can certainly work on, but he proved me wrong that day. He just said, this is my skill. I'm going to do this.

Bondy said he doesn't quite like bowlers saying "I'm going to bowl my best ball." Other coaches say that if the bowler knows their best ball, that's what they need to go to. Dale, did you find that at odds with something that you've learned before?
Steyn: I want bowlers to speak a better bowling language, really. I almost feel like when you just say, "I'm going to bowl my best ball and whatever's going to happen," I almost sometimes feel like it's a little bit of a cop out. Or "I'll do my processes," and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, guys, surely there's more to it. There's definitely more in your brain than just something as simple as that.

"Going for 18 or 20 is bad. Going for 30 is worse if it's because on the last two balls you were just like, oh well, I'm done. And that's what we are always trying to tell our guys: 'I don't care if you go for 20, just don't go for 26 or don't go for 24. It's going to happen'" Dale Steyn

I almost didn't have an answer to AB [de Villiers]. He's that kind of guy that just knew. He knew me, he has played against me and he just saw exactly what was coming. And I did kind of think to myself, "I've got to land this ball", but even when I landed it, he still had the better skill to be able to get me away on that day. And sometimes I feel like I should have probably gone against what my best ball was because he would've expected one thing and I could have gone the complete opposite and pulled off the bluff. You learn these things as you play.

Bond: What I meant by that is, if you listed as a bowler all the balls that you've got, a bowler will have a yorker, wide yorker, slower ball, from over and around the wicket. So you've got these lists of deliveries that you can bowl. And then you think, when I'm bowling to Virat Kohli, where does Virat want me to bowl? What are his best three shots? And so your fourth-best ball might be better than his fourth-best shot. So then the plan might be, that's the ball I've got to bowl. It's not my best ball, but it's the best ball against his shot that he's going to line up. And to me, that's where you've got to get to as a bowler: look, I've got this skill set, I've got all these balls that I can bowl, and I've got to keep working on making all of them better. Then it's how I apply those balls in the sequence I do against the batter, knowing their strengths and where they want to score.

And then the next step on top of that: how do I use the field to manipulate the batsman's thinking? So I'm moving the [fielder] guy, the batsman's [then] thinking, why is he moving? And if I can create a little bit of doubt in their mind when I miss, because the batsman's not really expecting what he's going to get, then he misses out on that ball that would go for six, maybe it gets clocked down for one. And that's what excites me as a coach, those set plays, moving fielders. We will get to the time where a captain will put his hand up with a number and everyone will move positions or certain players will move and that's what I'm excited for as a coach and where I think bowling can go to.

Aren't we already seeing versions of that? England have started it, analysts do it. Afghanistan did it.
Bond: The biggest one is the actual on-field ones. We talk a lot about moving players who are either in play or not in play to create distractions for players. We'll see fast bowlers who might run off three different types of run-ups. They might be off 20 metres, ten metres, 15 metres, so batsmen get a different feel for it. Ten, 20 years ago, if you said batsmen are going to turn left-handed and whack it over midwicket, you probably would've laughed. And I still think bowling's catching up to, okay, why can't a bowler bowl off a ten-metre run-up and then a 20-metre run-up so the batsman's timing is all off? The fielders and field placement is a big part of it.

Sunrisers' performance analyst Gaurav Sundararaman (far right) attributes their bowlers' success in the SA20 to their ability to hit the six- to eight-metre lengths consistently © BCCI

The biggest challenge with cricket is, you do all your training in the nets and you don't actually get the chance to often practise with fielders until you get out into the heat of the game, and then you are under the pump, so you sort of forget about it. That's where you can take the next step in cricket.

That's interesting. Would bowlers actually be better off training in an open net or a match simulation?
Bond: Well, as a bowler you don't get that feeling of getting smacked through the covers for four [in the nets]. So mentally you are almost not training. So when you then walk out into an IPL match and the first one actually gets blazed through the covers, that's when you see the glaze come over bowler's eyes and they are like, wow, I'm getting smacked. And part of your preparation as a bowler in the nets is to prepare yourself for when things go poorly.

So as a coach, you are trying to put those strategies in place with your captain and your senior players on the field, to give clarity of decision-making and getting bowlers just to understand, like batsmen do when they undo their gloves [between deliveries]. You have got to consider the last ball, but really you've just got to focus on the next ball; take the information from the ball that I just bowled and focus on this [next] ball because it can all unravel real fast if you don't.

As the game stands today, sometimes no matter what you do, batters are going to get the better of you. It hurts, doesn't it?
Steyn: The conversations that you are always having with your bowlers is, guys, you are never out of the game and don't give up on the over. Going for 18 or 20 is bad, okay. Going for 30 is worse if it's because on the last two balls you were just like, oh well, I'm done. And then you end up losing the game by six or ten runs. The game is won on small, small margins. And that's what we are always trying to tell our guys: "I don't care if you go for 20, just don't go for 26 or don't go for 24. It's going to happen."

"Sometimes with bowlers there's a bit of a fear of what if it doesn't go right? And I'm like, well, what if it goes right? How exciting is it if you've got a new tool in your toolbox" Shane Bond

Like I said earlier, there was a time when Polly would run in and bowl ten overs for 30 or for 25 runs, and if somebody [else] went for 50, it'd be like, wow, someone's gone for 50. We don't talk about that anymore. We talk about impact. You can almost break up a four-over spell in a T20 - one in the powerplay, first one outside the powerplay, one in the middle and one at the death. And those are four different occasions that you can potentially win. And it doesn't necessarily mean you are going to walk away with 2 for 20. You might walk away with 2 for 50, but in the last over you defended ten or you defended eight.

So you are talking about moments more than anything else. And the bowlers are just now starting to buy into this, so they are not feeling that pressure where they go, I need to go out there today and I need to get 2 for 30 or 2 for 20 to feel like I have done my job. Like a batter has to get a fifty or a hundred or whatever the runs are.

What would you tell young Dale Steyn today, with everything that you know?
Steyn: The Mzansi League in South Africa was my last season in competitive cricket. I said, I'm going to actually try and attack the stumps a little bit more, because I was so good at bowling like fourth or fifth stump in Test matches that I very rarely actually got a lot of guys out bowled in T20. I had to go against everything that I did because I was scared my economy rate was going to go up. But I did an experiment and I was like, okay, I'm going to go for it. And strangely enough, my economy rate stayed the same. I actually got a couple more wickets.

If I could go back to a 25-year-old Dale, I'd say to him, do what the team needs you to do but if you feel it's the time to strike, you strike. Just don't go against the run of play, don't bowl a bouncer with third man and fine leg up, but have that mentality to try and take a couple more wickets. That's pretty much what I would've said to that young man.

Steyn sees Marco Jansen as one of the few fast bowlers to find success in all three formats in the future © AFP/Getty Images

Bondy, since you worked so much with Bumrah, and he is the gold standard that you want bowlers to live up to, if you have to make a checklist of what constitutes the most important elements for someone who will grow into being an outstanding bowler, what does that entail?
Bond: Work every day. Just that continuous improvement on your fitness, on your skills. That's what [Bumrah] does. He does the preparation off the field. So he will spend the time looking at the batsman, understanding his own game. He listens, so he'll take feedback, we reflect on performances and he'll consider it. He won't always agree, but he'll always consider it. That's a big one - just reflecting and considering all that sort of stuff.

Body language, which has always been a work in progress with Booms, that's improved. He's just a player who has huge self-belief. That's one thing as a bowler or as a player, sometimes you can't give someone that inner belief that you are good enough. Now that can come through performance. Every player that makes an IPL team or a national team just wants that one performance where they feel part of it.

But the great players have this, and Dale was a great player, and he talked about that white-line fever, this huge confidence in their own ability, that no matter the moment, they are up for that moment. And Booms is up for the moment. He loves that big moment and wants to put himself in there.

And in that question you asked Dale, the one thing I would have told my old self is: Don't worry about it. Don't be so worried and too scared. Because I often hear bowlers now say, [when I suggest] why don't you set this field? And they go, "But what if he nicks it or what if it goes over there?" And that's what I wish I'd taken out of my game. Well, so what? It's just a game of cricket. Just relax. You have trained, you have worked hard. Just go out and absolutely be free and let go and relish every part of it.

Listen to the podcast version of this interview

Raunak Kapoor is deputy editor (video) and lead presenter for ESPNcricinfo. @RaunakRK

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

 

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