It wasn’t the searing pace, the almost unplayable swing, the deadly accuracy, or the nasty bounce that undid many of the world’s greatest batters for the better part of two decades. It was the eyes. 

When Dale Steyn was in the mood, which was often, his nostrils flared and the eyes burned with electrifying menace. Batters had to look away because to meet the Steyn glare was like looking into Medusa’s stare — it turned them to stone. 

Their ability to move and to cope with Steyn’s thunderbolts was impaired by those wild eyes that promised so much misery and suffering for those that dared try to resist in the face of his coming onslaught. They almost all invariably failed. 

At Test level, Steyn retired as South Africa’s leading Test wicket-taker with 439 scalps in 93 Tests. He took them at a sensational average of 22.95. He took 26 five-fors and bowled so many spells of huge significance it could fill a book. 

What cemented his greatness was not only the wicket haul, but it was where and when he took them. South Africa’s first-ever series win in Australia was sealed by a 10-wicket Steyn haul in Melbourne. He weighed in with 78 valuable runs with the bat too. 

On the sub-continent, Steyn bowled some of the greatest spells by a fast bowler in Karachi, Nagpur and Galle.   

And typically of the nastiest, most brutish of fast bowlers, as menacing as he was on the pitch, Steyn remains one of the most decent humans off it. He had the ability to flick the switch at the right moment and go from nice guy to scary monster in an instant. 

When those eyes lit up and he fixed his searing glare on some poor unfortunate soul in cricketing armour, Steyn was in battle mode. And there was inevitably only one winner.

But when he left the arena, there were few more engaging, warm and genuinely interesting sports people around. Steyn was and is, a human with varied interests first, and a cricketer a distant second. 

The call that never came

On Tuesday (31 August) the 38-year-old called time on all professional cricket. He’d already retired from Tests in 2019, but had hoped to play on in One-Day and the T20 formats of the game. In February this year he told Daily Maverick that he still wanted to play for the Proteas in white-ball cricket. 

“I’m still available for South Africa,” Steyn said at the time. “I haven’t retired. If I went back into the South African team right now, I’d still out-run and out-bowl anyone.”

Sadly, the South African team never came calling again and Steyn never had the chance to back up his claim. After months of mulling, in between pursuing his other loves of surfing and skateboarding, Steyn drew a line under cricket. In his unique way, he used lyrics from the band Counting Crows to call it quits. 

“And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than last. I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell myself to hold on to these moments as they pass,” Steyn paraphrased the band in his statement. 

“It’s been 20 years since training, matches, travel, wins, losses, strapped feet, jetlag, joy, and brotherhood. There are too many memories to tell. Too many faces to thank. So I left it to the experts to sum up my favourite band, the Counting Crows. 

“Today I officially retire from the game I love the most. Bittersweet but grateful. Thank you everyone, from family to teammates, journalists to fans, it’s been an incredible journey together.” 

He last played for the Quetta Gladiators in the T20 Pakistan Super League in March and his last match for the Proteas was in February 2020 against Australia in a T20I clash at the Wanderers. 

In between, there were the 93 Tests, 125 ODIs and 47 T20Is for the Proteas. There were hundreds of T20 games around the world, including in the Indian Premier League (IPL). 

There were two massive shoulder injuries, a torn groin, back problems, arm issues and painful feet. He extracted more than anyone should from their body because he didn’t have the height of natural fast bowlers. But he was all fast-twitch muscle fibre and attitude. It went a long, long way.

“You’re there to do a job, but you also need room to express yourself. You can have tattoos and funky hair. You can have a different personality,” Steyn told Daily Maverick in February.

“Dennis Rodman of the great Chicago Bulls side of the 1990s was one of the first athletes to prove that. Bulls’ coach Phil Jackson embraced those differences and got the best out of Rodman. We need more coaches in the world who are willing to do that.” 

Unplayable monster

Sometimes he’d just be bowling, as much as someone of Steyn’s skill could “just” be bowling. There were times when he was on autopilot, and the thousands of hours of muscle memory honed over punishing hours of playing and practice would carry him through a spell. 

But then there were periods, frequently, when a switch flicked and Steyn the dangerous fast bowler turned into Steyn the unplayable monster. He may as well have had serpents growing from his head like Medusa, because it was terrifying. 

For the thousands in the stands and the millions watching on TV, it was beyond exhilarating. Dale Steyn in full flight, rhythmically approaching the crease, eyes blazing, vein on the side of his temple pulsing like one of Medusa’s snakes, was a great sporting sight. Unless you were the poor sod at the other end, waiting for the ball to be unleashed with incomprehensible controlled rage.   

South Africa’s Dale Steyn celebrates after taking the wicket of Pakistan’s Mohammad Hafeez during the second day of their first test cricket match in Johannesburg, February 2, 2013. (Photo: REUTERS / Mike Hutchings)

Fast bowlers have always been cricket’s great attraction. Batsmen might steal the show with their drives and cuts, but fast bowlers are really what people want to see. It’s all blood and thunder. 

The great West Indian side of the 1970s and 80s had some of the finest batsmen the game has ever seen, but it’s their litany of fast bowlers that people remember. Holding, Garner, Croft, Marshall, Daniel, Walsh and Ambrose. They don’t need first names to be remembered with awe and fear. 

Ditto the Aussie greats — Lillee and Thompson, Lee and McGrath. And Pakistan’s Waqar, Wasim and Shoaib don’t need surnames for cricket lovers to feel a prickle of excitement. 

Dale Steyn sits comfortably in that company, and even, possibly, at the head of it. 

Stats back it up

Arguments over any sport’s greatest players is a largely subjective exercise, but cricket at least provides a great deal of statistical evidence to back it up — and Steyn was monumental. 

His strike rate of one Test wicket every 42.3 deliveries is seventh on the all-time list and only the spectacular Kagiso Rabada, who has played more than 30 Tests (47 to be exact) sits above Steyn on this list. For Steyn to have taken wickets so efficiently over nearly 100 Tests is jaw-dropping. 

His strike rate is better than those of Malcolm Marshall, Allan Donald, Michael Holding, Mitchell Johnson and many others. 

Steyn was named International Cricket Council (ICC) Test cricketer of the year in 2008 and was in the ICC’s team of the year for eight of the 10 seasons that followed. 

He was the world’s top-ranked Test bowler six times at the end of a calendar year as he broke records, bones and spirits along the way. 

But it wasn’t all a fairytale, and the sight of New Zealand’s Grant Elliot launching a Steyn delivery deep into the Eden Park stands to give the Black Caps a sensational World Cup semifinal win over the Proteas in 2015 exposed his humanity. He wasn’t the perfect bowler, but he was close to it. 

He knew what it was to win and succeed and he understood what it was to suffer. Steyn was the most human and interesting of all South Africa’s post-apartheid cricketers and he will no doubt continue to surprise us in years to come. 

For now, though, memories of that classical delivery stride, the beautifully cocked wrist coiling to unleash hell behind his terrifying glare, will have to do. DM