Smith asked me to bowl the negative line to De Villiers reveals Mitchell Starc

South Africa batsman AB de Villiers scored 71 not out runs in the 1st innings of the first Test while he got run out in the second innings after facing just 1 ball. The batter once again stood tall in front of the Aussie bowlers as he notched up a match-winning unbeaten 126-run innings in the second Test. After a disappointing result in the first game, the world number 2 returned to their aggressive best after an inspired 11-wicket haul from Rabada sunk the Aussies.

Australia‘s premier pacer Mitchell Starc has revealed that during the second Test, skipper Steve Smith asked him to bowl the leg-side line to De Villiers so that they can keep him away from the strike. Interestingly, Starc revealed that he did not follow the instructions of bowling the negative line from the skipper.

Starc was of the thought that De Villiers has two kinds of shots for a single ball bowled at the exact length which makes the margin of error very less for the bowlers. “He seems to be able to play a couple of different shots to the same length ball, so your margin for error is a lot less to someone like him,” said 28-year-old Starc.

He’s human, we’ll get him out: Starc

Starc was hopeful of getting the batsman out in the next game as he was pretty confident of their bowling unit. He mentioned that De Villiers is a human after all and he will make a mistake. “But he’s only human, so he’s going to make mistakes and you’re going to be able to get him out and people have before in the past and I’m pretty confident in our bowling attack. So there’s no doubt we can get him out four more times in the series,” he said.

According to Starc, they didn’t bowl good deliveries to De Villiers consistently and that is one of the reasons they could not pick his wicket. He felt that If good balls are bowled to him consistently, they can get him out.

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