Steyn steps away as one of the greats
DALE Steyn took enjoying life away from cricket seriously.
He surfed, he ran his dogs through Tokai forest, speared his leg with a hook while catching tiger fish in the Okavango, caught a crocodile (a baby one, not a man eating giant like some overseas made it out to be), played street football barefoot with kids in Dhaka and enjoyed a midnight burger at a fast food joint during a Test match in London.
On the field cricket was a serious business. Off it, he made a point of getting away. Now he can do so properly, although, given his social media comments and the fact he’s thrown himself into doing analysis for website espncricinfo.com, you suspect he’ll never leave the sport entirely.
It will be difficult to do that, when you’ve given as much to cricket as Steyn and attained the status he did over the course of a professional career that lasted 18 years. His views have always been forthright; his infamous wave and scream of ‘Five,’ directed at the England dressing room was one case on the field, his press conference at Canberra in 2014 when he discussed Michael Clarke and how he’d lost respect for him offering an illustration of his honesty off the park.
It does seem strange to be reflecting on Steyn again, just two years after there’d been so much said and written when he retired from Test cricket. For it is in that format that Steyn made the biggest impression. His reputation as one of the greats wasn’t stamped by what he did in South Africa - the best place to play for a fast bowler - but what he did when conditions weren’t in his favour; when there was no assistance off the seam, the ball wouldn’t swing conventionally nor bounce higher than the bails.
Steyn revelled in conditions that were flat, when the pitch was dusty, the temperatures high and everything favoured the batsmen. It's as if he wanted batsmen to feel at their most comfortable, so that he could then prise them out. A wicket had a bit more value in those circumstances.
The ‘Vaughan ball,’ was one he’d repeat a couple of times in his career; Michael Vaughan, the former England captain, actually got dismissed twice with it, the second time at Lord’s in 2008; Michael Clarke got one at Perth in 2012 and VVS Laxman got a ‘Vaughan ball’ at Newlands in 2007. Those look good, but the best of Steyn was when he set up a batsman, as he did Sachin Tendulkar at Nagpur in 2010 - on a flat pitch, where Hashim Amla had scored 253 not out and Jacques Kallis 173, the previous day.
It’s a 13 ball set pitting two greats in a mini-battle of precision. Every single one of Steyn’s deliveries to Tendulkar demanded the highest level of concentration. Everyone was on the line of off-stump, including a bouncer, under which Tendulkar ducked. Some balls moved in, most went away, as Steyn sought to bring the little master forward. The 12th ball, Tendulkar drove exquisitely to the long off fence. Steyn smiled at that. Perhaps he knew already, because the 13th ball, at the start of a new over, also shaped away from Tendulkar, bringing him forward, the ball kissing the edge and giving the ‘keeper a simple catch.
It was the high point of a magnificent day for Steyn, who finished with figures of 7/51 in India’s innings, the best performance of his career. It’s fitting that it should be the case because it exemplifies everything he was about as a Test bowler.
To call his limited overs international career underwhelming might be unfair, although by comparison to his exploits in whites, that might be the case. It certainly didn’t feel like he had the impact in One-day and T20 cricket that he had in the Test format. There were stand-out moments of course; his spell in the 2015 World Cup quarter-final against Sri Lanka which blew that game open, his ‘five-for’ at Nagpur in 2011 that set up the thrilling victory over India and his last over against New Zealand in the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in 2014.
But his most memorable moment came in defeat in the 2015 semi-final in Auckland - Grant Elliot and all of that ...
Steyn did hope to still attract the selectors’ attention - weird given his history - for one final hurrah at the T20 World Cup. He played in a couple of T20 leagues, but the panel had moved on, and now he can too.
Via social media he’ll no doubt keep providing witty insights about the Proteas, their opponents and other fast bowlers seeking to emulate him. His analysis on cricinfo is intuitive and forthright and hopefully he keeps giving those kinds of insights.
But it’s his dogs, rods and surfboards that will have his attention now - a life to be enjoyed, with cricket now no longer the priority.