Once he had the ball reversing, Dale Steyn showed why he is the world’s finest bowler
Liam Brickhill in Harare06-Sep-2014’Today I thought, what the hell, I’m actually going to go for it’ – Steyn
“Once I saw Parny [Wayne Parnell] swing the ball a little bit, I actually went and whispered in my captain’s ear that I wanted to bowl straight away. He bowled Immy [Imran Tahir] and then brought me on and said ‘look I really need something big here’. We were able to get the ball to go through the air, and I felt that my lengths were a lot better in this game.
“In the last couple of games I’ve tried to just contain things and hold things back and just wait for the Aussies or Zimbabweans to make mistakes. Today I thought, what the hell, I’m actually going to go for it. If I get the ball to reverse I’m going to be attacking those stumps, I’m going to be hitting those pads, and I’m going to try and get the ball to go as quickly as I can through the air and rush guys.
“We got it to go in a couple of other games, but the crucial thing today was the length. Against Australia the other day I had one or two balls that [Brad] Haddin played and missed at, but the length was too short. You really have to attack the stumps and give yourself the best opportunity to get those three types of dismissals – bowled, caught behind and lbw. And that means throwing the ball up there. It takes little bit of guts to throw the ball up there, because to these batters if you get it wrong they’ll hit you over your head or through the covers for four. If it pays off, it pays off.”
Until today, the slow bowlers had dominated this series. Prosper Utseya, who is not known for running through sides, was joint highest wicket-taker with Nathan Lyon. More often than not, the quicks had struggled to move the ball off the straight, and four days ago Dale Steyn had leaked 64 runs in nine overs against Australia. The memory of Mitchell Marsh’s mighty trio of sixes off Steyn was erased by the bowler’s fearsome riposte this morning.Steyn had struck with the new ball, though his dismissal of Phil Hughes was more fortunate than skillful as the left-handed batsman had laced a stinging catch at short cover after an aggressive start. It was in his second and third spells that Steyn started to find significant reverse swing – and that with a ball that was only 14 overs old. With Wayne Parnell providing solid support, Steyn dismantled Australia’s middle order to reduce them from a comfortable 115 for 3 to a perilous 137 for 7.”The minute we pushed on his buttons today, he came to the party,” AB de Villiers said of Steyn. “I needed wickets at that time, when he came back on. We’d been working really hard on trying to quieten them down after a difficult first 10 overs. At that stage of the game it was a little bit in the balance and I felt it was a good time to get our best bowler on, and he made sure that it was a good decision from my side.”George Bailey, Australia’s captain, had expressed a wariness of the threat of Faf du Plessis’ almost inevitable runs and, predictably, du Plessis once again scored heavily but given the extent to which the pitches in this series have nullified the threat of pace, the Australians weren’t prepared for Steyn’s assault.The fresh pitch used for this game was a bit of an unknown quantity, and when he looked at the track yesterday, George Bailey confessed that he had no idea what to make of it. Though this ground is well watered, it’s not nearly as lush or spongy as it would be in December or January, with the rainy season in full flow, and as Bailey pointed out, the central location of the wicket meant that there was rough ground on either side of the pitch to help scuff up the ball.”We thought it would [reverse] today, given the wicket was in the middle,” Bailey said. “That’s the closest we’ve played to the middle [of the field] so you had two rough sides. Wayne Parnell bowls a lot of cross-seam early on, so they are obviously working on, and on these wickets it’s a really smart ploy.”The man Bailey is standing in for, the injured Michael Clarke, took to Twitter to air his views on the game as he watched it on television in Australia. “Reverse swing? Class bowling,” Clarke tweeted as he watched the game on television from Australia, following that up with: “Reverse swing in the 28th over, with 2x white balls this means it’s really the 14th over.. Hopefully we get it swinging as well..” Reading between the lines, one might tempted to find just a hint of suspicion in Clarke’s tone. De Villiers insisted, however, that the difference between Steyn and the Australian attack, who found far less reverse swing, was a matter of skill.”He’s the best bowler of reverse swing in the world, by a long way,” said de Villiers. “Once we got it to tail a little bit, it was a no brainer for me to get him on. Their balls were also tailing as well. I had a few plays and misses to James Faulkner, who’s not bowling at 145 like him. He doesn’t have the skills to take it both ways like he has. He’s bowled numerous sides out before, in India and all over the world with a reverse swinging ball, even if it only just goes a little bit. That’s what he did today. He showed more skill than most of our bowlers, and the Australian bowlers.”Steyn was clearly pumped up when he was presented with a reversing pill in his second spell, his fluid, quicksilver run-up followed by the cobra-strike of his delivery, and every wicket followed by his blood vessel-bursting celebration. When de Villiers hit the winning runs, Steyn’s delight at beating Australia was clearly evident as he cheered with win from the balcony of the team dressing room. “AB came out and asked the guys, please, one more big performance,” Steyn said. “One more big performance in conditions that don’t suit us, that we’re not familiar with, that we don’t particularly enjoy. And to beat Australia? Love it. Who doesn’t like beating Australia. They are a world-class cricket team. Right now, this team deserves every beer – or energade – that they’re going to have tonight.”The Harare Sports Club crowd would be dwarfed by the kind of spectator numbers Steyn would have played in front of in India and elsewhere, but ticket sales for this match were very impressive and the ground must have been approaching its capacity of 10,000. This was a marquee event in Harare, and the occasion was even marked by a fly-over of a squadron of aeroplanes ahead of Sunday’s Big African Airshow (the largest to be held in Zimbabwe for 20 years) at Charles Prince Airport. With dancing in the stands, Mexican waves and war-cries at HSC, this was the Big African Cricket Show. Imagine what it would have been like had Zimbabwe reached the final.”The crowds have been fantastic,” said Bailey, graciously. “They obviously really appreciate seeing a bit of international cricket.” Indeed, if this tri-series has shown one thing about Zimbabwe, it would be that there is a massive appetite for quality cricket here. Nowhere in the world would you be able to see Australia play South Africa at such bargain ticket prices, with the majority of people paying just US$2 to enter. It’s also one of the most picturesque grounds in the world, with its old-school pavilion, ringed by pines, jacarandas, and the low-lying cityscape beyond. It was a fitting arena for Steyn’s fiery masterclass.