Just to comment on the continued devaluation of Olivier on this board.
Firstly, Olivier has not played that much test yet, but he has had some decent performances against a few countries already, of course against Pakistan is his best so far. So does not mean that he will not perform better in future.
In the beginning of the series he himself stated that he has a specific job to do in the South African team, and that is to hit the deck hard. In domestic cricket he bowls quite a variety of balls, but he is very good at hitting the deck hard and extract steep bounce. The same as Morkel before him, Mcmillan many years back, etc.
South Africa have almost always had 1 bowler that were required to bowl a hard ball.
If you look at the 4 seamers in the current team, you have Rabada that is a fantastic seam bowler and getting better at swinging the ball, you have Steyn that is a fantastic swing bowler, of course he can do seam as well. then you have Olivier who is the hard ball bowler creating steep bounce, and Philander who is your medium fast bowler with very good accuracy and seam movement. So basically they have 4 different style seam bowlers working together. In that way not giving batsmen time to adjust to a style most of the time.
I has been working well for SA for many decades to have this kind of bowling setup. So just because some arm chair specialists on this board do not rate Olivier does not mean that he is doing exactly what the team wants him to do.
They knew before this series that Pakistan will struggle against steep bounce and he prepared accordingly as Gibson wanted him to bowl.
There is an age old cricket saying that seamers bowl in pairs, helping each other out to take the wickets.
I am very glad that the expert selectors on this board are not selectors for the SA team.
