Steyn key bowler for Proteas |
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Tuesday March 25, 01:03 AM
Chennai, March 24: Dressed in a sleeveless training vest, shorts and running shoes as he was on Monday, he could easily have been mistaken for an undergraduate who had slipped quietly into the college athletic field looking for a game to play in. His thin legs are almost like Glenn McGrath’s. If Dale Steyn were a couple of inches taller, he could well be slotted into a sequel like Pigeon II.
The danger is looks are deceptive. The whippet-like athlete of a fast bowler is the key to what South Africa can hope to achieve on their tour of India that starts in right earnest on Wednesday with the first Test of the Future Cup, at Chepauk.
Whatever accent the visitors may place on their twin spin attack option and on the fast bowling prowess of former cowherd Makhaya Ntini and rising star Morne Morkel, the fact is the Proteas will be largely dependent on Steyn being the battering ram who can shake up a batting lineup with his swing, nip off the pitch and persistence of line and length.
Having seen Allan Donald bowl the first ball for South Africa on their return from international wilderness in 1991, I can vouchsafe that Steyn is the next big thing on the South African fast bowling scene. There is some similarity to the rhythm. If ‘White Lightning’ was poetry in motion, Steyn is not that far from refining himself into as grand a fast bowler.
In keeping with the cricket culture of the age in which not so much emphasis is laid on history, Steyn sounds most practical. Asked who he spoke to regarding his bowling plans for India — did he confer with Donald? — the youngster quipped "Kirsten." And then with a shy grin much like that of a shy college lad, Steyn declared that colleagues on the field, batsmen in the nets and the video analyst were his closest allies who shaped his bowling, pointing out to him what is the most difficult length and pace for batsmen.
Steyn (24) is more down to earth than the local supermarket. "At the end of the day, you don’t have to bowl at a million miles per hour. You don’t need speed to be the world’s best bowler." To back his argument he offered the ready examples of two bowlers he must admire the most — Glenn McGrath and Shaun Pollock. He also spoke of Ishant Sharma as the new sensation in pace bowling who is not express but simply very good.
"Where you bowl is important. You must get the ball in the right areas," he says with a spartan practicality. ‘Right areas’, a modern day coinage, might sound a cliché already, but if you can bowl with Steyn’s persistence and swing the ball away from the right handers, you can pick up a success rate that the world admires. Incidentally, Steyn has 105 wickets from 20 Test matches, a strike rate to match Dennis Lillee and Richard Hadlee’s five-plus over a career that is a benchmark.
What gives him the confidence to give everything in his short bursts is he is backed up by Graeme Smith who gives him the ball for his destruction job and by bowlers of huge potential bowling from the other end. "There is always somebody there to back me up," says the latest South African pace weapon.
In the fashion of today’s youth, Steyn may wear a complicated looking watch that might even tell him what pace to bowl besides the time of day. But there is no mistaking the intensity of youth in a man who has shaken up a few batsmen in world cricket already while also picking up three successive man of the series awards in recent times. Not only is he the sporting equivalent of a sequel to McGrath, but he could also one day be called White Lightning II. If he quickly learns what it takes to come back and bowl as well with the older ball, I would fear for even the most vaunted Indian batting lineup. Make no mistake - Dale Willem Steyn is India’s biggest threat even on spin-friendly pitches expected in the series.
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