Dale Steyn

I'm lucky because not only do I have the chance to experience the thrill of winning, but I also get to bowl really fast. Those two things are the best feelings in the world, better than any drugs - not that I've tried any.

I want to keep experimenting and trying to change my game.

I love playing cricket. I wake up every morning and I can't see myself doing anything else.

The workload with Test cricket was too much as I want to extend my career for as long as I can.

When you don't have sport, it's like, oh, what do we fall back onto? And I think Nelson Mandela was the first person to really say that: sport unites people in a way that nothing else does. And if you take sport away, then I don't know really what we have.

In South Africa, we kind of like looking for things that unite people in big, big groups.

AB de Villiers is probably my favorite cricketer, he is an incredible batter and a good friend.

If you're not going to the World Cup expecting to win, then you probably shouldn't go.

I have four dogs - Sadi, a Retriever, and Oscar, Ruby and Bella, who are Yorkies.

With my work schedule, it's difficult for me to spend quality time with my dogs. But whenever I'm home, I make it a point to spend as much time as possible with my dogs.

When I'm in South Africa, I make it a point to take my dogs out to the beach.

I still don't know why batsmen are taking so much time to figure me out.

I love winning. Maybe it's more that I hate losing?

If I'm only going to play one more match, I want to take a wicket with every ball, not try and defend a boundary.

I want to be a good cricketer, but I am a person first and a cricketer second. I won't always be a cricketer, but I will always be a person.

From the moment I became an established international cricketer I always had a strong feeling that I should be doing some 'good' while I had that profile, using it to try and make a difference.

Conditions are always different here in Durban. Especially different from Johannesburg.

I enjoy taking wickets more than most people can understand. I'm addicted to that feeling.

Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock were my heroes, so I thought averaging 22 or 23 and taking five-wicket hauls was normal.

There have been a few times when I wondered if I was ever going to take a wicket, but you never give up.

Right from the start of my career I was surrounded by people like Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher and Graeme Smith, who gave 100 percent in every performance.

Steve Smith is a marvelous player.

Every ball matters - if with the last ball the opposition need four to win, and you've gone for 96, can you get that out of your mind and bowl a dot ball and win the game?

Lord's is a special place. I used to love watching games there as a youngster and I've been fortunate enough to play a couple of games there.

For me, I need to bowl lots of overs in order to start getting back into form - much like a batsman needs to hit a lot of balls.

When you are in the company of greatness, there is only one thing to do: to raise your game.

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'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 I love bowling in India, the grounds are quite flat whereas in South Africa you feel you are running uphill.

The thing I've got to concentrate on for South Africa is bowling at good pace and if the ball is in the right area that will cause enough trouble.

I would love to bowl 160 km/h. Any fast bowler would love to do that. But for me that is almost impossible.

There's a lot of guys who can bowl 150 km/h when you give them the ball when they're fresh in the morning, but can they do it late in the afternoon when it's boiling hot and they're bowling their 20th over for the day? I want to be able to do that and I want to be the only guy who is able to do that.

It's very easy to say take a player, a world-class player out of the system of playing and just push him into a coaching role but coaching is a whole other thing. It's a skill.

If I wanted to do anything in the coaching world, I would probably need to upskill myself.

If you are just constantly doing the same thing, good batters can adjust.

With Test cricket, it's very important that you are bowling at high speed but T20 cricket is a great way to be versatile.

You get guys that are good. Then you get guys that are excellent. And then you get AB de Villiers.

One of my highlights of being a Proteas player is that at one stage we were the No. 1 team across all formats.

Traditional cricket has gone out of the window. It's gone. T20 cricket has changed the game.

It's enough to play for South Africa and take wickets for South Africa, and then I managed to get 400. I never thought that that would happen.

I have never been a stats person.

Coaches have plans and structures, and if you're not in those plans you shouldn't take it personally.

Great fast bowlers don't have to worry about whether the track is flat or green. They'll find a way to get wickets.

In a World Cup you don't have anywhere to hide.

If you want to bowl a yorker, you have to land it; if you want to bowl a bouncer you have to be on the money.

I could bowl really fast and as the years went on I started to develop more skills - I learnt how to swing the ball a little bit, use the crease a little bit more. But I knew what my skill was and that was to run in and bowl fast.

You got to be street smart I suppose when you bowl in India. You can't bowl at the same pace at the same place. Guys will work you out.

In South Africa, you can get away sometimes because of the bounce. You may get away with full wide balls. In India, it does not bounce and finds the middle of the bat and goes flying to point or extra cover for four.

If you're playing Test cricket you could bowl 20 overs in a day. I could play about five T20s in that space.

As long as that drive is still there to play at the highest level, to get batters out, fox them and outsmart them and that kind of stuff, if I can do that I'm going to continue to do that.