Dale Steyn: Not a Feared Fast Bowler Anymore?

Dale Steyn - 396 Test wickets in 78 matches. A genuinely fast and menacing bowler who will perhaps make it to almost every cricket fan's 'best Test bowlers' list. (Complete IPL 2015 coverage | Stats | Photos)

Things, however, are very different when it comes to the shortest format of the game and specifically the IPL. (Harbhajan Singh's comeback: Thank God for IPL)

In 89 IPL matches, Steyn has taken 92 wickets. He has played every season of the IPL so far and this season his 3 wickets in 6 matches are his worst figures since the 2009 season when he took 2 wickets in 3 matches.

World Cup hero Trent Boult was preferred over him by his franchise this time. The Kiwi quick played 7 games. Steyn taking a backseat is not something the cricket world is used to seeing. (AB de Villiers taught me to keep my head still while batting: Mandeep Singh)

Is Steyn's image taking a beating? (IPL teams not top paymasters?)

When asked if he was unhappy about losing his place to Boult in the Sunrisers Hyderabad team, Steyn said, " I think Trent is a kind of guy who has just come out of a fantastic World Cup where he had 20-odd wickets.

He offers something different to the team being a left-arm swing bowler and we have got a bunch of right-arm bowlers in the side. So it is nice to have that difference. I have got no problems losing out on a place to Trent."

He might be the consummate team-man, but when it comes to the shortest format, he might not be a batsman's nightmare.

In fact, NDTV IPL expert and former Australian cricketer Dean Jones summed it up, saying, "The most feared guy in world cricket is not feared anymore now."

What's an open secret now is the fact that the 31-year-old South African is a different bowler in Test cricket and a very different entity in the shorter formats of the game.

According to NDTV cricket expert and former India captain Sunil Gavaskar there's something very important missing in Steyn's arsenal.

Gavaskar told NDTV, "Steyn becomes a different sort of bowler when it comes to T20s, because he doesn't have the yorker. At the pace that he bowls, if he gets the yorker going he can become dangerous, but he keeps bowling the Test match length and he gets clobbered. You saw in the semi-final of the World Cup, he bowled that Test match length - a good length ball - and Grant Elliot smashed him for a 6.

Here in the IPL you have seen him bowl the length balls and he has been hammered by just about everybody. He has to add the yorker to his repertoire and I'm sure for a bowler of his class and ability that will not be so difficult."

We have seen some of the greats of the modern game like Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jaywardene and Hashim Amla being ignored by IPL franchises. Is Steyn heading in the same direction?