'There's been a lot on my mind' - Steyn

It was high noon in Canberra when Dale Steyn received a call that could have changed his life.

"It was about 3:30 in the morning in Cape Town and the people looking after my house called me and said, 'Listen, you've got five minutes, we're evacuating. What do you want us to take out of your house?' I've never been more scared in my life," Steyn said. "I'm sitting halfway across the world, and everything that I've ever earned or gotten in my life, every wicket, every ball, every bit of clothing in my 31 years is in that house. So it was pretty scary to think, what do you tell this person? They've got five minutes to take everything out. I was pretty much shitting myself."

Bush fires that razed at least eight Cape Town homes were encroaching on Steyn's. Faf du Plessis lives on the same estate and his wife Imari had been donating supplies to the firefighters who worked through four nights to put out the flames. Jacques Kallis, whose lawn had been set alight, also lives there. The allrounder was hosing it down himself. From afar, Steyn felt helpless.

"If I was at home I'd dive straight into it and do what I can to help. It really is terrible. A lot of animals, pets, homes, nobody should go through that kind of stuff. It's a pretty tough time back home right now," Steyn said, admitting it hasn't "been easy" to focus entirely on the World Cup. "There's been a lot on my mind. My mind has been somewhere else the last couple of days."

Steyn house was unaffected in the end but even before the fires he did not look his usual self as he eased into the competition. Before leaving South Africa he had described himself as being "ready to knock these guys out," and found that did not quite work on a dead track in Hamilton. "Against Zimbabwe I actually wanted to bowl quite quick and run in and try to knock them over, and I don't think it was quite the right strategy on that wicket," Steyn said. "It was a bit slow, and their bowlers proved to be a handful. Just by getting the ball in the right area, good use of the slow ball and so on, I just ignored that instinct and just wanted to run in and blast them where it didn't work."

Steyn concentrated more on containing against India and immediately had better returns and has since seen his curve move upwards, although his rewards have not. "It's gradually just gotten better. I haven't taken the wickets that I want to take, but that's the World Cup," Steyn said. "In a World Cup you don't have anywhere to hide. You get criticised in every game that you play. If I was playing in a series back home, I would have been quite happy with the way things were going."

Treating the World Cup like just another series has been a catch phrase for South Africa and Steyn is applying the same to himself. As the "series" goes on, he believes his turn will come. "If we make it all the way to the final, I'm due to have a good game somewhere in there and we're almost halfway there. I've got a couple more to go before a good one's just around the corner."

Before South Africa can entertain thoughts of getting there, they have to get through two more group matches in New Zealand, where the size of the grounds add another challenge to the already difficult life of a bowler. Steyn's immediate goal is to find a way to counter that.

"It's always tough to be a bowler, isn't it?" he joked. "But great players find a way to take wickets, and it's just something that we have to do. It doesn't matter whether the track is green or flat or the field is big or small, we'll find a way. The game will always evolve. It's just the life of a bowler, I guess."

One of those ways has not been on show that often in the World Cup - the yorker. Although it is the go-to delivery for bowlers hoping to do damage control at the end of an innings, it has made only sparse appearances, especially in the South African attack. Steyn isn't sure that will change at Eden Park against Pakistan.

"It's a difficult delivery to bowl. I think it's even more difficult to bowl now because we've brought two new balls into the game, which is great because it does swing up front, but a couple years ago when you only used one ball, when you bowled a yorker in the 45th over the ball was 45-overs old," Steyn said. "It was slightly softer, and not as easy to get away. Now the ball is 25-overs old, it's still pretty hard and pretty new. If you missed your yorker by just that much, it travels a long way in the field like we've got out here today. If you missed your yorker bowling straight, the straight boundaries are 40-odd meters. That is a chip and it's six. So bowlers tend to get nervous about using the yorker."

Instead, bowlers have to rely more on tactics than technique at the death. "A lot of mocking has come in - just trying to fake where you're going to bowl. Set a leg-side field and bowl a wide yorker, that kind of thing," Steyn said. "You're trying to outsmart batters. We're starting to realise if bowlers can go at eight runs an over in the last 10 overs, you're actually doing a pretty good job."

Not half as good as the men and women who continue to fight fire on Cape Town's slopes. "It's just a tremendous job by all those firefighters and the volunteers that put their lives at risk," Steyn said. "They have never met me before, never met most of the people. They were just kind of like throwing themselves at it."