Is Steyn as deadly as Lillee?

Is Dale Steyn getting the recognition he deserves? Yes, most cricket-lovers around the world know that he is a world-class bowler, and yes, a fair number are probably aware that he has sat atop the ICC Test bowling rankings for a little while now, but has the cricket world really taken note of quite how razor-sharp Steyn is?

The list of the fastest men to reach 250 Test wickets reads like a roll call of post-war bowling greats. Fred Trueman reached the mark in 56 Tests, while Ian Botham, Imran Khan, Shane Warne, Anil Kumble and Glenn McGrath all took 55. Just ahead of that group come Richard Hadlee and Malcolm Marshall (53 Tests), Waqar Younis and Muttiah Muralitharan (51 Tests) and then Allan Donald (50 Tests). The only man to have reached 250 wickets in fewer than 50 Tests is Dennis Lillee. By the end of the fractious Melbourne Test of February 1981 (Lillee’s 48th), he had accumulated 251 wickets at an average of 23.37 and a strike rate of 50.9. If we take Lillee as the gold standard for fast bowling, then both statistically and technically, Steyn measures up pretty well.

Were he to maintain his current form, Steyn would slot into the list of the fastest men to 250 wickets close to the very top. Before the start of the Cape Town Test, he had taken 232 wickets in 45 Tests at an average of 23.31 and an incredible strike rate of 39.7 (better even than Waqar’s 40.4 at the corresponding point of his career). What’s more, Steyn has been collecting his wickets at a time when batting averages have crept ever higher and other top-notch seamers have conceded more than 30 runs per wicket.

Amid the talk these days about “bowling dry” to frustrate impatient modern batsmen, Steyn stands out as a genuinely attacking quick – a bowler very much in the Lillee mould. His primary weapon is a textbook 90mph outswinger, while he is also capable of extracting plenty of movement in the opposite direction off the seam. These deliveries are made all the more effective by the fact that despite lacking the natural splice-hitting bounce of a Curtly Ambrose or Morne Morkel, Steyn is adept at pinning batsmen to the crease with hostile, skiddy bouncers. If his mastery of reverse-swing is not quite at the level attained by Wasim Akram and Waqar, then it cannot be too far off. There have been several spells with the old ball in which Steyn has resembled a 2005-model Simon Jones.

Mention of Jones and indeed Lillee reminds one of the need to cross one’s fingers and toes that Steyn avoids the various types of injury that can so often disrupt or curtail a fast bowler’s career. If he stays healthy, the Steyn is well on course towards becoming an all-time great. Indeed, he has already produced some truly outstanding returns on slow sub-continental pitches, something Lillee never did. Steyn picked up five-fors in Colombo and Karachi before his 5 for 23 in Ahmedabad in 2008 consigned India to their worst home defeat for almost half a century. Of course he did even better in Nagpur last year, when his 7 for 51 (which included a spell of 5 for 3 in 22 balls) set up another innings victory over India, by then the world’s top-ranked side.

Just like Lillee, Steyn has thrived as the leader of his team’s attack. He may be rather more soft-spoken than his Australian predecessor off the pitch but is just as tenacious and aggressive on it. For a country boy from the Limpopo province, he has also shown remarkable confidence on the big stage, never more so than in the epochal 2008 Boxing Day Test at the MCG, when his 10 wickets and career-best 76 runs – just the type of gritty innings of which Lillee would have been proud – sealed Australia’s first home series defeat for 16 years.

Steyn was named the world’s leading Test cricketer in 2008, a year described by Graeme Smith as South African cricket’s greatest ever. This was followed by a relatively quiet year for him in 2009, but in 2010, he was right back in top form. Though Jimmy Anderson, Graeme Swann and Zaheer Khan all enjoyed the best years of their respective careers, when the calibre of batsmen dismissed is taken into account, it is Steyn who emerges ahead of the pack.

Right now, aged 27, Steyn is just as deadly as Lillee ever was. What remains for him to prove is that he can be just as dogged.