Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE, Centurion
“I wish I could swear,” Dale Steyn said on Saturday once he had exhausted his vocabulary of acceptable words to describe how much he loved playing test cricket.
Steyn need not worry that he had expressed himself inadequately. He had left his profanity on the field, where showed what was possible when an expert at moving the ball off the seam and through the air, and at high speed, is able to hit a postage stamp consistently.
According to West Indies captain Denesh Ramdin, Steyn had taken “six for a little bit of runs”. According to the scorebook, Steyn had claimed 6/39 and SA had battered the visitors to defeat in the first test at Centurion by an innings and 220 runs with more than five sessions to spare.
In West Indies’ first innings, Steyn had bowled well enough to take several wickets. Instead, he left empty-handed.
“Sometimes you go past the edge, sometimes you find the edge,” he said. “Even Dean Elgar got a wicket - I was a bit bummed about that.
“You always want to take wickets. I want to take all 10, all 20; I won’t bloody lie.
“There was nothing special about today (Saturday). I just found the edge. Yesterday (Friday) I didn’t deserve to take wickets. Today (on Saturday) I did.”
Would the memory of his assault linger with the West Indian batsmen until the second test, which starts at St George’s Park just five days from Sunday?
“I hope so, I like to get in players heads,” Steyn admitted. “The pitch there is slow and the ball doesn’t get up as much, so it’s difficult to get out of the way of the bouncer. You always have to play it.”
Steyn almost got inside Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s head in more than the mental sense on Saturday. Faced with a bouncer aimed at his neck, all the left-hander could do was use his gloves to fend the ball to wicketkeeper AB de Villiers.
Although brutal, it was a delivery bowled with the intent to dismiss, not dismember. But it set the ghost of Phil Hughes swirling nonetheless.
And to think Steyn bowled only five balls in the second innings on Friday before limping off with a groin problem, which SA captain Hashim Amla dismissed as cramp and said was resolved by “overnight carboloading”.
Steyn returned on Saturday to marshall SA’s victory charge, in which they claimed seven wickets for 55 runs in 15.3 overs to end the match more than an hour before lunch on the fourth day.
“I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly,” Amla said. “But, standing behind the stumps, we all got the feeling things were going to happen quickly.”
Steyn celebrated 10 years as a test player when the match started on Wednesday, as did De Villiers.
But, instead of a party hat, De Villiers found himself wearing wicketkeeping gear after Quinton de Kock turned an ankle during the warm-up on Friday.
De Kock has since been ruled out for the next six to 12 weeks with torn ligaments, which could put him danger of missing the World Cup starting in February.
De Villiers, who had not kept wicket in his last 25 matches for SA across all formats, showed that he had not lost any of his sharpness with a leaping catch to help Steyn remove Ramdin.
“That was Spiderman,” Amla said. “He told me he had three things crossing his mind when the guy nicked it. That’s the miracle of AB de Villiers.”
“The Miracle” seems set to be back behind the stumps at St George’s Park, unless SA decide to replace De Kock from outside the squad.
Faf du Plessis, meanwhile, was back on the field on Saturday after missing the third day with what is thought to be a viral infection. Vernon Philander, too, showed no sign of the hamstring niggle that hindered him on Friday.
But the Windies will countenance the spectre of the remaining two tests without Kemar Roach - their best bowler at Centurion - because of an ankle injury. They would be forgiven for swearing.
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