South Africa vs England: Dale Steyn still expects to be the spearhead

Despite niggling injury, South Africa’s rapid bowler – the best in the world – is confident he will be fit to put the frighteners up English batsmen, he tells Stephen Brenkley in Durban

(Getty Images)

Four players keep exchanging the world’s No 1 batsman ranking. Kane Williamson took over at the top of the charts this week from Joe Root, who had supplanted AB de Villiers. In the summer they were all behind Steve Smith, who was named as the ICC Cricketer of the Year.

Barely a match goes by without one of this fab four moving up or down. It is as fascinating as it is arcane: they are the leaders of a new golden generation of batting.

Compare this moveable feast to the bowling rankings. For nearly seven years one man has been almost perpetually the best bowler on the planet. Dale Steyn remains virtually unchallenged. He is No 1 now as he was No 1 in 2009. Only for one three-month period between the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, when his team-mate Vernon Philander could not stop taking wickets, did Steyn slip to two.

There is no doubting Steyn’s potency or the dramatic effect he can have on matches. He can seem to go for ages without doing much but when his captain really needs a wicket, he turns to Steyn, who usually obliges. There is a way that great players have to influence matches when they most need influencing.

Steyn missed three of the four matches on South Africa’s recent tour of India, where they were dominated by spin and lost 3-0. On those unforgiving surfaces, his presence would probably not have made the difference but they undoubtedly missed him.

It was South Africa’s first away defeat in nine years, a magnificent record in these days when everything seems to favour the home team, but it has created a sense of enormous foreboding.

Steyn, always an engaging chap, always willing to talk candidly about the game and his part in it, seems to have been affected by it. South Africa might be the No 1-ranked Test side with the No 1 bowler but the heavy defeat in India, where they succumbed tamely against turn and made more than 200 only once in seven innings, has left them fearful that the side is in decline. The batting is brittle and Steyn’s injury has provoked fears that, at 32, he too is on the downward slope.

“Look, I think right now, after the series in India, if we look back a couple of years ago we had such a wonderful cricket team,” Steyn says ahead of the Boxing Day Test against England. “We had guys like Jacques Kallis, Graeme Smith – Graeme was a wonderful player, I don’t think many people realised how good he was. He set the platform as an opening batter and captain for every other player in the team to succeed.

“So losing guys like that has definitely had an issue with this team trying to find players to fill their spots. Our team at one stage was such a wonderful team we didn’t need coaching, we just needed the man-management to get the players to perform at their best.

“Now we definitely need some coaching and some guidance again. I’m not saying we don’t have the coaches on board to do that but I’m saying every player needs to sit down and have a little bit more of a listen, to challenge themselves a bit more, talk a bit more cricket.

“We still have a wonderful cricket team, we’re still the No 1 Test team in the world, and we’re playing at home against a really good England side, who are also coming off a really dodgy series in the UAE. So I think it’s going to be an evenly matched and great series.”


 Steyn is currently the No 1 ranked bowler in the world
 (Getty Images)

With Steyn’s sidekick, Philander, definitely absent for the first two matches of the series against England after also being injured in India, South Africa are desperate for Steyn to play in Durban on Boxing Day. He has passed the necessary fitness Tests and he seems ready to go, but without any match practice his selection is a risk.

“I’m feeling good, the ball’s coming out fine so I think the key thing for me is to make sure I can get through between 15 and 20 overs in a day and I think I can do that,” says Steyn.

“I’ve been bowling twice a day. I go in the morning, maybe bowl 30 to 36 balls, wait 10 or 15 minutes bowl another 10 to 12 balls and then go again late in the afternoon and do it all again.

“There was a four-day game [I could have played] but I didn’t want to risk it, I wanted to give this leg of mine the best opportunity to heal and, hopefully, I’ll be 100 per cent ready for the Test. If I haven’t had any cricket before that, it’s OK. It’s almost been 11 years of playing international cricket for me – I think I’ll be OK.”

Steyn’s record against England is comparatively modest. His 46 wickets in 11 Tests have cost 32.63 runs each and been taken every 56 balls. His overall Test average is 22.56 and what sets him apart is that his strike rate for his 402 wickets is 41.75. Only Sydney Barnes, who bowled his last ball in Tests 101 years ago, is slightly better at 41.66.

But the stark figures hardly do the man justice. In his first Test match in Port Elizabeth 11 years ago, he made a mark on England’s collective psyche with a remarkable ball which still causes its recipient to shake his head in wonderment.

England were chasing down a target of 142 to win. The loss of two early wickets did not help but South Africa had to take more of them quickly and regularly to have a prayer. Graeme Smith, the captain, turned to Steyn, who was almost immediately dispatched for two fours by England’s captain, Michael Vaughan, then still in his batting pomp.

The sixth ball of the over, full and fast, was angled in on leg stump and Vaughan shaped to play through the on side. At the last second the ball swung late and rapidly away from the bat and removed Vaughan’s off stump. That ball served notice of what Steyn could do and he has done it frequently in the years since. He can clean up right-handed batsmen for breakfast.

Eleven years on, Steyn is still enjoying it. Asked about his body rebelling he was quick to point out, rightly, that he had played 48 consecutive Test matches until his injury in Mohali.

“I must be honest, I’m 32 but I feel like I’m 27 and act like I’m 19. It’s bloody terrible! I watched Brett Lee bowl the other day and he was playing a Big Bash game and he’s 37 or 38 and he’s still running in and bowling 145kph. And I’m thinking, ‘Shit, this guy can do this – I can do that. I can do that!’ I just feel like if I can contribute with the ball and make a dent into the opposition I’ll continue playing.

“It might be next year that I say OK, it’s no longer for me, or it might be in four or five years’ time, but as long as I’m strong and I feel like I can make a contribution I’ll carry on doing it. My main job is to bowl 145. On a good day when the wind’s behind me and it’s a nice flat track I can bowl 150. But if that kind of stuff can’t happen I’ll think again. But I have a couple of years left. You still have a bit more shit to write about me.”

It will be a pleasure.

Sky Sports will show England’s tour of South Africa as part of a schedule of live sport over the festive season

--

SOUTH AFRICA'S BOWLERS

Kyle Abbott - 5 Tests, 19 wickets at 19.10

Morne Morkel - 67 Tests, 227 wickets at 29.30

Dane Piedt - 2 Tests, 12 wickets at 26.83

Kagiso Rabada - 3 Tests, 2 wickets at 55.50

Dale Steyn - 81 Tests, 402 wickets at 22.56

Leading ICC Test bowlers

1 D Steyn (SA) 875 points

2 R Ashwin (India) 871

3 J Anderson (Eng) 846

4 Y Shah (Pak) 846

5 S Broad (Eng) 840

6 J Hazlewood (Aus) 792

7 R Jadeja (India) 789

8 T Boult (NZ) 787

9 V Philander (SA) 746

10 T Southee (NZ) 731