Junior Dala rates AB de Villiers as the best in the world

It took a lot of time for Junior Dala to break into the International side, but once he broke into the International circuit, he ensured everyone took notice of this fast bowler. He was terrific against India in the T20I series a couple of months ago and is looking forward to Test and ODI cricket for South Afric in the time to come.

After all the success he has attained in the last few months, he specifically expressed his gratitude to one person. That one person is none other than AB de Villiers, who played with Dala a lot in the domestic circuit. Dala also rated AB as the best cricketer in the world for his training techniques and work rate. He termed that he and Lungisani Ngidi have benefitted a lot from his pieces of advice.

“First and foremost, I think AB is the best in the world. When we keep playing the T20s, he is the first one to go to the nets and always the last one to leave. And he is so specific in the way he trains. For a senior player coming down to play for his domestic side, he puts in a lot of inputs and gives a lot back to the younger guys in the team. It’s not a surprise that Lungi Ngidi is doing really well for the Proteas. It’s just the little bit of advice that he gives us is really helpful,” Dala said.

Talking specifically on how ABD has helped him become a better bowler, “He (ABD) said that every time before you deliver the ball, just think what the batsman is trying to think with a certain field so always go into the batter’s mind before you make up your mind on what delivery to bowl. And that has worked,” He said.

If I can bowl to AB, I can bowl to anyone

Dala had picked up the wicket of Virat Kohli with an absolute peach in the T20I series, a wicket many bowlers dream of. Talking about that dismissal, Dala said that if he treated Kohli as a normal batsman, not as the legend he is. He also went on to say that if he can bowl to AB de Villiers, he can bowl to anyone in the world.

The one thing I did say to myself was, ‘when I bowl to Virat, just play the batsman and not the man – Virat’. Fortunately, I had a lot of practice bowling to AB de Villiers in our domestic T20 so I always figured that if I could bowl to AB, I could bowl to anyone in the world. I just tried to bowl my best delivery to Virat on the day.

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