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| A cricket shot from Privatemusings, taken at the third day of the SCG Test between Australia and South Africa. Dale Steyn (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
All I have to offer is my deepest sympathy. Our Boys in Blue are at it again, being destroyed on swinging and bouncy pitches outside of the sub-continent, as they almost always have. Forced into a very odd schedule by their greedy board with zero practice matches, it's probably some sort of crime under a rarely used law to then place a slightly psychotic Dale Steyn up against them.
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Dale Steyn's Twitter ID bio [@DaleSteyn62] is short. It says "Terrible guitar player..." The humility is extraordinary. And terrifying. Simply because he doesn't feel the need to boast about his daytime job don't mean he is no good at it. Quite the opposite. Virat Kohli recently said "No one is afraid of anyone." Brave words but a little irrelevant. You don't need to be scared of Dale Steyn, only of his deliveries.
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The scariest bit is that the cricket playing world's deadliest fast bowler is not trying to be the fastest bowler on the planet every single delivery. He is too busy deconstructing the victim's/batsman's mind, unravelling his technique and plotting his wicket. Oh, but he can be exactly that, on a whim, leaving the batsman's chin and Adam's apple unhappy at the metronomic accuracy that accompanies his fatal pace.
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Sure, the other bowlers on the current South African side are no tag-alongs and great sportsmen in their own right but none of them engender a primal fear for personal safety like Steyn. On his day, as most days on speed friendly pitches are for him, any batsman's dismissal is unremarkable; survival admirable and anything else unthinkable.
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