The South African quick has been snapped up by Glamorgan to spearhead the Welsh county\'s attack for the first half of this season\'s NatWest T20 Blast. But how much do you know about Dale Steyn?
Steyn is recognised as one of the best fast bowlers in world cricket. He dominated the ICC World Number One spot for bowlers between 2008 and 2014 and was the fastest bowler in history to reach 400 wickets in terms of number of balls bowled.
Since making his Test debut in 2004, Steyn has played 82 Tests for South Africa – he became the fastest South African to reach 100 wickets in Test matches in March 2008.
Steyn later became the second fastest bowler – behind Australia’s Denis Lillee – to reach 250 wickets in Test matches, a feat he achieved in his 49th match.
As of 2013 he had the fifth-best bowling strike rate of 41.1 (in Tests), behind George Lohmann, Vernon Philander, John Ferris and Shane Bond.
Steyn has previously appeared in county cricket for Essex and Warwickshire and has represented the likes of Royal Challengers Bangalore, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Deccan Chargers – for whom he was signed for more than one million dollars in the 2011 IPL auction.
He was due to play in England’s washed-out ODI versus South Africa at The SSE SWALEC in 2008, before finally making his Cardiff bow in the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy clash between South Africa and India, where he appeared alongside Glamorgan’s Colin Ingram for the Proteas. In the game he dismissed Johnson Charles and Marlon Samuels en route to notching figures of 2/33 in a dramatic tie.
That same year, in 2013, Steyn was named as one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers Of The Year.
Steyn, now 32, is a veteran of 166 T20 career matches, in which he has taken 178 wickets, with an economy rate of 6.68.
DALE STEYN IN NUMBERS
406 Test wickets in 82 matches
117 ODI wickets in 112 matches
166 career T20 matches
Economy rate under 7 in T20s
Bowled 10th fastest ball of all time – 156.2 Km/h (97mph)
£2.07m Twitter Followers
Watch some of Steyn's best moments in a South Africa shirt here (credit to xgeneration cricket):