When it comes to tackling the peerless Virat Kohli, Fannie De Villiers wants the South African team to play the waiting game in the upcoming Test series. The former South Africa pacer told PTI: “Only way to get a Virat Kohli kind of batter out is a very orthodox way of bowling on the fourth stump channel and play a waiting game. And wait for that one delivery which nips a bit far away. You can’t attack a good player.”
He cited Tendulkar’s example to drive home his point. “Like in case of Tendulkar, it was silly to always wait for leg before (to an incoming delivery). Because he would hit you through mid-wicket. So bowl those deliveries outside off-stump (to Virat) and wait for one to either nip away or nip in.”
De Villiers’ international career ended in 1998, at least a decade before the T20 revolution took the cricket universe by storm and when asked if he would have got a multi-million dollar deal like Pat Cummins or Mitchell Starc, he stared laughing.
“I started bowling slow bouncers back in late 1980s in local cricket but thought it might be dangerous to do it in international cricket… I have always been an inventor of new ideas and established them to fall back on all the time,” he said.
Bowling is a difficult art and one needs to work consistently to develop.
“It’s very difficult to understand bowling if you don’t work hard at it. Guys need to be disciplined, inquisitive and teachable and that gets you interested in what you can do. Not every player evolves with time but I was a guy who evolved. Definitely, I had the innovative streak.” So what about an IPL deal? “Obviously, you are thinking money when you talk about auctions but I would think in lines that could I have coped. I could bowl yorkers. I started the trend of slower deliveries.
“From a fast bowler’s perspective, you need to be innovative to survive the IPL. I would have been less expensive because of my ability to bowl yorkers and slower ones.” He says in simple words how can one survive the IPL.
“In IPL, either you have to bowl really fast or really innovative to survive. I think I would have fallen in innovative category quite effectively. So missed out (on IPL), yes, but no complaints, as I had a wonderful career.”
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