Steyn storms back to centre stage

Dale Steyn didn't have to say anything to announce his return to international cricket but he did, complete with an expletive and five exclamation marks.

"Fok, I'm excited!!!!!," he tweeted.

Then he actually announced his comeback with his 11th delivery. He removed Alastair Cook with a jaffer that jagged off the pitch and invited the edge and the physical expression came out. The throbbing vein, the pumping fist, the wild hair and the mad, mad eyes. No, he was not lying about being excited.

After seven weeks on the sidelines, that was the kind of return that reassured South Africans, who were sensing the start of the end. Steyn's injury run (eight times in the last two-and-a-half-years) and interests beyond the boundary - surfing, babysitting his nieces, nature conservation - indicated their fears were justified. His reaction to that early incision allayed them, for now.

But there was more than just theatre to Steyn's celebration; there was also proper meaning. It's one thing to get a breakthrough when your captain has put the opposition in on a muggy morning, it's another you have broken through in exactly the right place. By taking out the leader of the opposition line-up, Steyn, as the spearhead of his own side, made the statement his captain needed him to make.

"Hashim [Amla] is always asking the leader of the attack to set the tone and I felt that was kind of my job today: just to set the tone," he said. "So it was great to get the first wicket, especially the English captain. It sets the tone for the team."

It also set a different tone for himself. "Normally I come into a series a little bit cold and then I kind of get better," Steyn admitted. This time he fired from the first exchanges to suggest the enforced time off was, as Allan Donald predicted, a blessing in disguise. But that's not to say Steyn was overworked before the India tour.

After the World Cup and the IPL, he sat out the limited-overs legs of the Bangladesh tour in July, watched rain for most of the two Tests and then played in three ODIs against New Zealand before more time off. It is safe to say Steyn's workload needs to be managed even more carefully in the future. Luckily Amla did not have to think about that immediately.

Steyn's first spell was interrupted by rain so an extra over could be squeezed out of it. By then, he had already taken another wicket when Alex Hales, anxious to make an impression, was cramped by a line just outside the off stump. The line, rather than the venom, accounted for Hales' edge and underlined the point that pace may not be the most accurate measure of performance.

"I'm not too bothered by if the ball is coming out at 150 or 135 or 131[kph] ... I always want to bowl fast, that's the main thing, but if I am causing trouble for the guy at the other end and I feel like I am hitting my straps and I am rushing him, that's good enough," Steyn said. "You can't always look at pace to tell how well a guy is bowling."

Especially not on this surface. Erratic weather, in which the temperature has varied by up to 20 degrees on consecutive days, and high winds, which have increased the risk of the surface drying out, have played havoc with preparation. As a result, the anticipated green mamba was closer to a brown house snake and there was nowhere near the amount of pace expected. Despite the heavy overhead conditions, there also wasn't much swing but there was a hint of turn and, later in the day, reverse swing, which Steyn hopes to makes use of tomorrow.

"The ball was damp all day so it was tough to get it to swing and shape and with the damp outfield and the ball getting all those little mud clods on it, it was getting a little bit wet all the time, and it delayed that swing," Steyn explained. "Hopefully tomorrow we can get that ball to reverse and cause some damage."

If that happens, it will require careful management from Amla about how much Steyn bowls. His captain tried to use him in short bursts after his opening six-over spell - three overs after lunch, four after tea, and Steyn was in his third of the evening when play ended - and at the moments when he sensed England were most vulnerable. Dane Piedt had only bowled one over and even though it resulted in the wicket of Joe Root, Amla brought Steyn back on immediately in an attempt to force a collapse.

But at other times when England needed to be kept under pressure, Steyn could not be the go-to man. After 32 overs, England were 92 for 3 but with all the seamers in need of a break and Dane Piedt in operation at one end, Stiaan van Zyl was called on. His middling medium pace did not really cost anything but it did raise the question of whether South Africa will find themselves short of a seamer at a later stage in the match.

Towards the end of the day, that may have been the case. Dean Elgar was called upon ahead of JP Duminy, who did not feature at all, and the temptation he offered proved hard for England to resist. Elgar was in danger of handing the day to England but Steyn pulled it back.

His dismissal of James Taylor in the penultimate over of the day gave South Africa a reason to feel they had salvaged something. And it did a little more than that too. When Steyn got down on one knee, like a man about to pop the question, and waited for his team-mates to say yes, the emotion poured out of his actions. He had announced his return and for a South African side with so much to prove this summer, no sound was sweeter.