Passion. Aggression. Ferocity. Three words that characterize Dale Steyn every single day he was on a cricket field. “If looks could kill” had a cricketing equivalent, Dale Steyn will probably be the first name that can come to one’s mind. If those deadly eyes weren’t enough to send shivers down the batsmen’s spine, Steyn hurled 5.5-ounce thunderbolts towards the batsmen. If lucky, those thunderbolts would leave the right-handed batsmen, only leaving them to face a few more.
Dale Steyn will go down as one of the greatest bowlers of all time. Having called time on a glorious career, we now look at the career of a fast bowler who made things happen even when it would’ve been acceptable if he did not.
Apart from picking up the most wickets for South Africa in Tests, no other fast bowler has earned more wickets in Asia than Dale Steyn in the 21st Century. In Asia, a place considered as a graveyard for fast bowlers, especially for the non-Asian pacers, Steyn’s bowling average of 24.11 is the second-best for any visiting bowler with a minimum of 50 wickets. For the same qualification, Steyn’s strike rate of 42.9 is the best for a visiting fast bowler in Asia.
South Africa is considered a fast bowler’s paradise. Seamers are expected to pick wickets at a miserly average and a superior strike rate. But to do that both at home in South Africa and alien conditions like Asia, makes Dale Steyn a once-in-a-generation bowler.
What made Steyn remarkable was his ability to bowl outswingers at a consistently high pace. His belief to back his outswingers and his ability to bowl them on any surface in the world made him a lethal force with the ball. With a cut-off of 300 wickets in Tests, no bowler in the history of the game has a better strike rate than Steyn’s 42.3 balls per wicket.
It might seem unfair to compare players from different eras as the conditions, quality of opposition, rules, etc. are different in each era. Dale Steyn made his Test debut on Dec 17, 2004, and played his last test on February 23, 2019. During that period, 13 fast bowlers picked up more than 200 Test wickets. Only Vernon Philander (21.64), Steyn’s partner in crime for a majority of his career, averaged fewer runs per wicket than Dale Steyn (22.95). Steyn’s strike rate of 42.3 balls per wicket in the same period is the best in the world, with the next best being Vernon Philander’s 48.6 – a difference of an entire over.
What these stats show is that during the time Steyn was active in Tests, no other bowler dominated the batsmen across all conditions than Dale Steyn. He was the second-highest wicket-taker (439) during this period, behind only James Anderson’s 542 wickets. Steyn also took more 5 wicket hauls than any other fast bowler – 26.
Dale Steyn was ranked World Number 1 in Tests from July 2009 to December 2013. 231 Weeks as the undisputed best bowler in the World. During that period, South Africa played 37 Tests, won 19, and drew 12 with Steyn playing 32 of them and being a part of all 19 winning matches. South Africa played 14 series in that period and didn’t lose a single series, winning 8 of them.
To show how heavily South Africa relied on Dale Steyn to win Test matches for them, Steyn picked up 69.48% of his wickets in the Tests that South Africa won, averaging 16.6 and taking a wicket every 32.1 balls bowled. South Africa struggled when Steyn struggled for form. His average in matches that South Africa lost is 35.14 and his strike rate 57.90. His performances in the drawn tests were poorer, averaging 40.53 at a strike rate of 76.2. Winning 48 out of his 93 Tests, Steyn showed why he was a beast, raging in with his best form in a whopping 51.61% of the total matches that he played in.
To label Steyn as a Test specialist would be a grave injustice to the man’s efforts in the white-ball format. Steyn picked up 196 wickets in 125 One Day Internationals at an average of 25.95. At a time when bowlers were at batsmen’s mercy, Steyn’s economy rate was a mere 4.87 runs per over.
Across all formats, Dale Steyn picked up 699 international wickets in 342 innings at an average of 23.37 runs per wicket and a strike rate of 37.02 balls per wicket. Steyn finishes as the 15th most prolific bowler of all time, but the batsmen who faced him and were at the receiving end of Steyn’s wrath with the ball would agree that when in rhythm, there was probably no one better, more lethal than Dale Steyn.