The absence of experienced pace bowler Dale Steyn is a blow for South Africa ahead of Thursday\u2019s Cricket World Cup opener against England at The Oval, captain Faf du Plessis said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Steyn has spent more than a month on the sidelines and was ruled out on Tuesday, though South Africa hope he will be fit to face India on June 5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe was probably about 60 percent when the squad was picked so we anticipated for this to happen, but a fit Dale Steyn makes our bowling attack a very, very strong one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Du Plessis said the trio of Steyn, right-arm paceman Kagiso Rabada and fast bowler Lungi Ngidi represented a real strike force as Plan A if all were fit. It was now a question of resorting to Plan B or C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All-rounders Chris Morris and Dwaine Pretorius are in the frame to replace Steyn, with du Plessis saying the emphasis had to be on getting wickets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no point in trying to play a defensive style of cricket against England,\u201d he added. \u201cWe\u2019ll pick our team to try and be as positive as we can be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Africa have yet to win the 50 overs title and du Plessis, captaining a World Cup side for the first time, said the emphasis would be on enjoying the cricket and the experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
England, he said, were deservedly the favourites but South Africa would not make the mistake of getting too focused on the opposition. \u201cWe are going in as underdogs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of people talking about South Africa winning the World Cup. If that releases some players in the team, then that\u2019s great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The absence of experienced pace bowler Dale Steyn is a blow for South Africa ahead of Thursday\u2019s Cricket World Cup opener against England at The Oval, captain Faf du Plessis said on Wednesday. Steyn has spent more than a month on the sidelines and was ruled out on Tuesday, though South Africa hope he will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62492,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62493,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62491\/revisions\/62493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}