Only 12 players have earned the distinction of being Wisden’s Leading Cricketer in the World, and only one of them has been a fast bowler – South Africa’s Dale Steyn in 2013. His profile revealed his struggles to reach the top.
His return of 6-8 against Pakistan at the Wanderers would have looked more at home in an under-9 fixture than a Test match, but even that mesmerising analysis wasn’t Dale Steyn’s favourite moment of the year. Instead, he selects the victory over India at Kingsmead in the Boxing Day Test, during which he claimed 6-100 on the least helpful surface the South Africans had encountered anywhere in 2013, including the UAE.
All year, one quality defined Steyn: intensity. It was a quality central to the South African dressing room. He maintained his characteristic vein-bulging efforts for every over of every spell, no matter how long he had been bowling, nor how hopeless the situation. He even endured the longest barren stint of his career: 416 balls without reward, between the wickets of Shikhar Dhawan in India’s first innings at Johannesburg and Cheteshwar Pujara in their first at Durban. Yet his response was simply to try harder.
Another secret is the open-minded naivety about cricket provided by his upbringing. His knowledge of the game was limited, and of its history non-existent. It meant he was underwhelmed by the excellence of his own performances, and undaunted by the expectations that followed. “Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock were my heroes, so I thought averaging 22 or 23 and taking five-wicket hauls was normal,” he says. “That was a fast bowler’s job.”
The third secret lies a long way from his youth – in the video analyst’s laptop. What some would call a healthy interest in computers and cameras, others would call an obsession. Ever since Steyn first discovered that what he had regarded as the perfect spell could be disproven by scientific evidence, he has checked his lines, lengths and groupings at every interval, not merely at the end of the day. Time and again he reached his own conclusions about how to dismiss a batsman – and then executed the plan.
Steyn’s 9-147 at Durban took him to 350 wickets in 69 Tests – joint second-fastest to that mark, alongside Richard Hadlee, and behind Muttiah Muralitharan (66 matches). Among bowlers to have taken 100 wickets, his strike-rate of 42 was bettered only by George Lohmann, Philander and S. F. Barnes – two of whom plied their trade over a century earlier. He shows no signs of slowing down or losing his enthusiasm. “I enjoy taking wickets more than most people can understand,” he says. “I’m addicted to that feeling. I live in the moment, but I hope there are many more years of it to come.”
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