Times Media
TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg
“Half my career, I was on one knee,” Hugh Page said yesterday, while Brett Schultz gave a novel explanation for the injury that ended his time at the top: “My bum muscle exploded.”
Dale Steyn knows how those two fast bowlers of yore feel. Little went wrong with Steyn’s body for 29 years. But, for his 30th birthday on June 27 last year, he gave himself five injuries - the side, groin, glute, neck and ankle problems he had after the Champions Trophy in England. Since then, Steyn has had two hamstring strains, a rib issue and an upset stomach.
“It’s like an old car; you’ve got to go in for more frequent services along the way,” Schultz said.
Schultz, 43, played the last of his nine tests in a career blighted by injury less than two months after his 27th birthday. He explained that he had not answered an earlier telephone call yesterday because he was visiting a chiropractor at the time.
“It’s the nature of our vocation,” Schultz said. “The body is put under tremendous stress. As you get older, you don’t recover as quickly and your mind is also not as strong. You start thinking about longevity versus performance.”
But the powersaving options dwindle and retirement wins. What then for SA? Steyn has been the sharpest, deadliest arrow in their quiver since 2008, when he first became the No. 1 ranked test bowler. He is a long way from spent but the question of who could succeed him as a dominant force is being asked.
“There’s no-one in our current set-up who can get the revs up to 8000, and on all kinds of surfaces, like Steyn can,” Schultz said.
Page concurred - “It is a worry; what happens after Dale Steyn?” - but he also saw a glimmer of hope named Beuran Hendricks: “He needs to work on his consistency, but anyone who can get it up to 144km/h is going to be hard to handle.”
What of Marchant de Lange, the 2.01m quick who looks as suited to the side of a scrum as he does to the bowling crease?
“His action is not very fluid, so he is quite likely to break down,” Page said. “That’s why I like Hendricks; he has a very fluid action.”
De Lange is 23. Already he has sacrificed plenty of game time to injuries including a recurring stress fracture of the lower back.
Sad as that truth was, it did not surprise Makhaya Ntini: “I used to listen to my body, and I used to do what it needed me to do.
“I used to run every day, sometimes before and after play. That meant my body was never stiff. These days they seem to believe more in massage.
“That means your body doesn’t get a chance to recover and it gets stiff. Then you push yourself before you’re warm enough and there’s not enough blood in your muscles.”
For Ntini, Wayne Parnell was Steyn’s most likely successor as SA’s enforcer. But that recommendation was conditional.
“He has the potential and he swings the ball, but I wouldn’t say he has the aggression,” Ntini said. “And I don’t know if he is going to last.
“Bowlers these days are not fit in the sense that they need to be better prepared. Too many are here today, gone tomorrow.”
I think that there is a lot of truth in Makhaya's method. It got him through a long career with hardly an injury. The old timer's swore by it.
The sign of what we can expect. 15 years ago kids were a lot more active. Computers have cahanged that. We will get more players that last for 2-3 years MAX at the top, and then disappear. Lets see if we do have a proper development program, or if it is all window dressing?