Jasprit Bumrah catches up with ‘GOAT’ Dale Steyn ahead of Border-Gavaskar Trophy

Jasprit Bumrah has shared a picture with legendary South African pace bowler Dale Steyn, in an Instagram post that has taken cricket fans on the platform by storm.
Bumrah, who will soon be travelling to Australia to take part in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy as the lead seamer and potential captain for India, had a short but straightforward message for Steyn following their meeting.
Bumrah captioned the photo of the duo as “GOAT”, the common sports terms to denote the greatest of all time, showing the respect the 30-year-old Indian seamer has for his South African counterpart.
A post shared by jasprit bumrah (@jaspritb1)
In the image itself, Bumrah and Steyn can be seen standing arm in arm, with one arm each held up to flex a bicep. At the time of writing, just two hours after Bumrah posted the image, it has already collected over 800,000 likes on the social media platform.
A fan commented, “This is like Ronaldo and Messi in same team.”
Bumrah is in line to captain the Indian Test team in the first match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, with reports stating that Rohit Sharma might miss the first Test in Perth due to the birth of his child. This would be the second occasion on which Bumrah will act as stand-in captain for Rohit, having previously taken charge in Edgbaston in 2022 for the make-up one-off Test against England that summer.
Steyn, meanwhile, has taken a step back from competitive cricket, but was to his generation what Bumrah is to this one — arguably the most feared bowler in the world at the time, capable of extreme pace but also otherworldly control to get the ball to talk on his terms.
Steyn finished his international career with 699 wickets for South Africa, while Bumrah currently sits on 411 international wickets for India. Steyn has spoken in the past about how he sees Bumrah as the greatest all-format cricketer in the world, and Bumrah’s appreciation for another fast-bowling great comes across in this Instagram post.
India are preparing to face off against Dale Steyn’s native South Africa in the second T20I of their four-match series, having registered a dominant 61-run win in Durban to begin proceedings. The teams, led by Suryakumar Yadav and Aiden Markram, now head to Gqeberha for the second match of the series.