Injured South African pacers Kagiso Rabada and Dale Steyn are on track to attain full fitness before the forthcoming World Cup in the UK, informed head coach Ottis Gibson, whose team will be taking on hosts England in the opening game of the quadrennial event on May 30 at The Oval.
Rabada, the stand-out bowler for Delhi Capitals (DC) in this year's Indian Premier League, was also the second highest wicket-taker of the tournament with 25 scalps in 12 games. But his stay in India was disappointingly cut short after a stiff back ruled him out before the playoffs.
Steyn, on the other hand, flew in mid-way through IPL 2019 and featured in two games for Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) before he suffered a shoulder injury and came back home.
"There was an issue with KG [Rabada] and there was an issue with Dale, but we feel that those guys are on track," Gibson was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz. "There's nothing that people should be alarmed about. They're going to both make full recoveries and be able to take their place at the World Cup."
Gibson also brushed aside talks surrounding the great Hashim Amla, who is currently going through a very lean patch with the bat. Amla has scored only two hundreds and four fifties since October 2017 and just recently opted out of the CSA T20 challenge mid-way through the competition.
"Hash just wanted to get away from the T20 bubble of trying to hit every ball. Obviously, he wasn't scoring big runs, so he felt like that was hampering his own preparation and his mindset of playing in England. We felt it was important to give him the space to do that. There were no real dramas of removing him from that T20 atmosphere."
Though the surfaces in England have been really flat for a while now, Gibson believes whether conditions can still turn things upside down and his team as well as its coaching staff's familiarity with those shores will definitely help in such a case scenario.
"England can be interesting, it depends on the weather," he said. "England lends itself to high-scoring games. The weather will play a part in that. I believe the conditions will play a huge part in the outcome of the World Cup. They are forecasting a hot spell coming up in the next couple of months, so perhaps the tracks will be a lot dryer."
"I've had two stints in England and I still live in England. Claude [Henderson] had 10 years at Leicester. Dale Benkenstein played 10 years at Durham. So from a point of view of conditions, we can give insight," Gibson concluded.
