Steyn's Cup gives Proteas a boost



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Dale Steyn spent the last day of June at the happiest place in the game of cricket.

He was in a winning locker room, at home cricket, surrounded by champagne and beer. He had played his part in the Hampshire defeat at the Royal London Cup against Kent and had signed a most productive month on the English coast.

In the same game, Rillee Rossouw's 125 had brought Kent out of the water, as the star-studded seasiders made her a memorable day. Steyn, 35, and apparently prosperous, will always be adamant and will not be the last final that he will play at Lord before he puts his eternal underdogs to rest.

When Steyn announced that he was going to leave for a stay in Cricket County, the news was greeted with optimism in South Africa. After all, his recent injury returns have been derailed by new blows to an aging body.

And yet, over the past five weeks in England, he's given himself and his teammates the last part of a fantastic career in the game. At his last First-clbad outing, Steyn helped five for 66. What would have encouraged him, his captain and endless coaches was the 29 overs work that he went through in this competition against Yorkshire. It has been exceptionally hot in England, and this sapping heat would have made the work even bigger. But Steyn showed that there was still gasoline in the tank, and his delivery of a performance to ward off Cheteshwar Pujara also confirmed that he still had all his tricks.

The coach of Proteas Ottis Gibson has no doubt that an ever-fit Steyn holds considerable value in the higher echelons of the game. Steyn regularly visited the Proteas locker room, even though it was not the same. He was clinging because Gibson wanted him to know that he still had a role to play in the near future.

His sense of play and his ability to reverse the pace, will be of great benefit on the Sri Lankan tour that the Proteas have just arrived. It's Steyn that the 2014 skipper Hashim Amla was inspired at Galle, during a famous win for visitors.

At this point, Shaun Pollock's record of 422 scalps was right on Steyn's horizon, while he continued to engulf victims around the world. But since he's visited India in 2015, the injury has been a curse that he has struggled to lose.

When he broke down in the summer, some feared his Proteas player days were over. But regular rehab, then Hampshire have put a foot in his step, one that, he hopes, will lead him to a final year of international cricket without injury.

With 419 wickets, it is a typical spell of rewriting history books.

This spell could still pbad under the considerable fort of Galle, who saw Steyn break the tusks of the house and toast a cup of tea with Amla.

Given the form in which Steyn seems to be, the Chai -wallas de Galle is better off.

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