Melbourne Stars Sign Dale Steyn For Upcoming BBL Season

Melbourne Stars will start their BBL campaign against Brisbane Heat at Queensland on December 20

Veteran South African speedster Dale Steyn has been signed by Big Bash League (BBL) franchise Melbourne Stars for the upcoming sixth edition. He will join fellow South Africans AB de Villiers and Chris Morris in the tournament. Former Proteas skipper De Villiers signed with the Brisbane Heat while Morris will be representing Sydney Thunder. “It's something that I've wanted to do for a while, play Big Bash. Unfortunately representing the Proteas for the bulk of my career over Christmas time we've always got Test matches on, the Boxing Day and New Year's Test matches. So I haven't been available. But since retiring from Test cricket, it's opened up a little window for me while the Proteas play red-ball cricket,” said Steyn after signing the deal. Steyn has been out of the action since he injured his shoulder in the Indian Premier League (IPL) in April 2019. Later, he was also ruled out of the ICC World Cup shortly after it began. He is currently preparing to play for Cape Town Blitz in the Mzansi Super League, which begins in November. The 36-year-old announced his retirement from the longest format of the game on August 5 this year to focus on limited-overs cricket. “The biggest relief off my shoulders was when I retired from Test cricket and I knew I didn't have to bowl 40 overs in a Test anymore. It was amazing. All the training that I'm currently doing right now, it's to bowl only 24 balls. When I put that into comparison to what I've done over the last 15 years of my career it really is pretty easy," Steyn said. Steyn had played 125 ODIs for Proteas in which he scalped 196 wickets with the best figure of 6/39. He also featured in 44 T20Is and bagged 61 wickets with an economy of 6.79.