Storyline: Dale Steyn is a young cricketer from South Africa. Steyn isn’t just good: he’s steyn-sational.
Favism, in short to be narrated, has crept in slowly due to tiny errors in deglutition, and, it has left me, a human, in a rare state of hallucination. Hallucination, this wrecked state of dislodged nothingness, has pushed the last wings of my hope into nothingness, that, which is friable to a large extent. A faint, weak, large, transient, wistful smile lightened my brooding face when I, for once, thought of the good deeds of Dale Steyn on the cricket pitch.
PORT ELIZABETH, SOUTH AFRICA – JANUARY 12, Dale Steyn of South Africa sends off a delivery during Day 2 of the 2nd Test match between South Africa and New Zealand at Axxess St Georges on January 12, 2013 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa (Photo by Duif du Toit / Gallo Images)
Phalaborwa, to you lot, might just be a new word, or for a few, a small town lying in all its humility. For me, stationed nearly 7000 kms to the right of it, it means a lot more than just being a place. It has, in it, a fleeting and furtive air of triumph, and it has given us, the aficionados, an individual who fleets himself up in the air upon claiming a wicket either in-swinging the off stump out of its roots or by capturing the batsman plumb and right in front of the wickets with a ball that hardly drifts away from the pitch.
As a pace bowler myself in the tiny hamlet I grew, I have enjoyed and rejoiced watching the likes of Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Darren Gough, Wasim Akram, Allan Donald and, my childhood idol, Javagal Srinath. Legends and legions of the game, they are tough characters who stood firm in the midst of deadly winds and turned out to be successful like a new and fresh rose would blossom.
Dale Steyn, comes after the above, and has in him, the ability to break himself out of the shuddening air, if only to a rapturous and a stupendous roar of the audience. He is, in short, a threonine, that every team rightly needs. You might be wondering why I brought up his name among the pantheon of legends that were put a bit earlier. Aren’t you, readers? Is he not a legend in delicately handling the new ball on a pitch that offers nothing but boredom to a bowler of his caliber? Is he not, a hero amongst many, who rose to the occasion like the gladiators to the core?
A few weeks starting from now he is going to be on national duty representing his country in a Test match series against India in its own backyard. Yes, his side is playing against my national side, but, fair to the core, there’s one rare thing that’s going to happen (I wish it happens for him too). He is only ten wickets shy of becoming the first ever international bowler to claim 100 wickets in Asia. Ten, only ten wickets will print his name permanently in the record books and his name will be a part of cricket’s immortal tapestry of literature. What decent and monumental a feat that would be? Watching him run to the batting crease with audacity and fineness, swinging the odd ball out, would raise in me, many hopes from the sepulchers. Watching him bowl motivates me to come out of feverish tides of life.
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – DECEMBER 21: Dale Steyn of South Africa bowls during day 4 of the 1st Test match between South Africa and India at Bidvest Wanderers Stadium on December 21, 2013 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Duif du Toit/Gallo Images)
All I can do lying here on my chair is to feed his scholarly curiosity and agility to take the new ball and see of it if only through my pen.
In an interview given to Arun Venugopal of the ESPN Cricinfo, Dale Steyn spoke richly about the adrenaline, we, only we, the pace bowlers have. He said,
“Everybody has adrenaline. I don’t know what it is about fast bowling. I guess it’s the ability to do something that nobody else can really do. Not a lot of people can run in and bowl really fast, you know. So that’s a nice thing, knowing that you are part of a small percentage of people in the world who are able to do that, and that’s a great feeling.
And when you are able to do it, that’s something you can’t discuss with many people, because of the small percentage of people that can do it, if you understand what I am saying. So that’s difficult to express how you really feel. It’s better when you start talking to other bowlers because they start to mention things and you are like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” It is like a small fraternity, I guess. Probably the same thing like Olympic sprinters or anybody that’s really good at certain things they do. But in this case it’s a really small breed. Anybody who bowls over 145 and can do that consistently.”
(You can read the full interview here.)
Literally, and logically, he echoes what every pace bowler have. Or, in my case, he is more than inspiration for a boy like me, who dreamt of becoming a Speedster, but failed in the chase of achieving it. That’s why I turned myself into a dossier of the game–the ability and the flair of bowling fast and the forte involved in making the best batsmen in the business, feel low by disturbing the furniture behind them. Scintillating stuff, that, which can hardly find any lexis when putting it in black and white.
He has been an excellent tourist to India in the recent years and we are glad he’s touring our country this time too, doing what he knows the best, Fast Bowling. The air and the weather may be a bit of a kind of braggadocio, but I hope he will see it off fine. When writing and thinking big about Steyn, I remember what James Baldwin once said in 1882.
He is one of the giants, and he still watches his fountain in far-off Jotunheim.
In short, as a fugleman of South Africa’s international Cricket team, Dale Steyn, has achieved everything he could wish for, or in my case, everything, a pace bowler dreams and wishes for. His artful strokes of policy in sticking to the line and length and never swaying from it, in the modern day are what truly make in a class apart; keep aside his jaw breaking short balls and swingers that would deceive your vision for a good amount of time. I have a sobriquet for him too. Steynsational, as in sensational.
He will, forever, be an an inspired ray till the end of father time for many a tenderfoot. Charivarius, aka, G Nolst Trenite once said about pronunciation.
Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
I, now, understand, Steyn would be Cricket’s finest grammar and truly wish for it to happen. Long may his richness last. Thank you for everything, brother.
