He’s proven he can catch crocodiles. He’s not a bad hand at fishing either (despite spearing his leg with a massive hook once). He loves surfing, skateboarding and when the national team’s security officials aren’t looking he’ll have a go at some street football, barefoot in the rain with some kids in Bangladesh.
Dale Steyn is – to quote the manager of his favourite football team – “a special one.”
The adventure and cheekiness stems from an upbringing in rural Limpopo in which cricket wasn’t immediately central to Steyn’s life. Skateboarding and goofing about in the bush were more his style until he got one of those cricket sets (containing a red tennis ball, a set of stumps and a bat) as a gift one Christmas paving the way to a career that has seen him recognised as the best in the business for the better part of a decade and even led to a cameo in an Adam Sandler movie.
When assessing Steyn’s standing as a fast bowler, the English would like to believe he is the equal of James Anderson, their fine swing bowler, who also recently surged past the 400-wicket mark, becoming the first bowler from his country to do so. In truth, as excellent a bowler as Anderson certainly is, Steyn is much better. So measuring his standing in the game, involves looking at him alongside the great fast bowlers – Malcolm Marshall, Wasim Akram, Curtly Ambrose and Waqar Younis.
Steyn’s skill is certainly the equal of many of those great quicks. He is mean and aggressive like they were too. His best performance in Tests – against India in Nagpur in 2010 – saw him bamboozle the home team’s batting line-up with not only reverse-swing, but conventional swing too. Mahendra Singh Dhoni described Steyn’s spell in the first innings of that Test as the best “display of conventional swing bowling I’ve seen”.
Unlike Anderson – who needs conditions to be in his favour, as was the case on the first day of current Ashes Test at Edgbaston – Steyn has shown himself capable of adapting on all surfaces. It helps certainly that he is generally about 10km/h quicker through the air than the Englishman, but his ability to offer a threat in all conditions makes the argument for him to be included among the all-time greats that much stronger.
One feature of Steyn’s performances is how when the force is with him he skittles opposing batting line-ups. One wicket becoming four in the space of a few eye-bulging, vein-popping, arm-pumping overs is something we’ve become accustomed to seeing from Steyn over the years – against Australia in Port Elizabeth last year, or Pakistan at the Wanderers in 2013 and more recently Centurion last summer against the West Indies. His teammates feed off it and it’s become a central element in South Africa’s ascendancy to the No1 Test ranking.
Steyn believes he still has a few more years to offer the national side. His pace will depreciate and perhaps those spells in which he knocks over four batsmen in a rush won’t be as frequent. However he will continue to be a threat, the landmarks will continue to be surpassed and the fishing, crocodile chasing and surfing will have to continue being part time activities for the foreseeable future. South African sports fans should be grateful.