Ken Borland

Dale Steyn not only always played his cricket with immense passion and skill, but with enormous soul, and now that the life of a professional cricketer is no longer fun for him, one of the greatest fast bowlers that ever played the game announced his retirement from all formats on Tuesday.

Steyn’s Test record ranks amongst the greatest from any era. In 93 Tests, South Africa’s leading wicket-taker claimed 439 wickets an average of just 22.95 and a strike-rate of 42.30.

It is that strike-rate and his record away from home (164 wickets in 37 Tests at 24.23) that sets him apart. Of the 79 bowlers who have taken 200 Test wickets, only compatriot Kagiso Rabada (41.20) has a better strike-rate. And no other fast bowler has made as big an impact on the subcontinent, Steyn taking 92 wickets in 22 matches there at an average of 24.11.

“It feels like I actually retired a long time ago. Not playing regularly, you lose the passion. You train for six weeks and sit in quarantine for 10 days to play in a tournament that gets cancelled a week later. There’s no fun in travelling anymore and I think half the reason I did so well overseas was because I enjoyed travelling, meeting people, enjoying different places and learning.

“Fitness-wise I have no issues, no niggles, so I am able to play still, I just don’t want to in that sort of environment that is now the ‘new normal’. The IPL last year wasn’t great with not one person in the crowd, and then I went to a couple of other T20 leagues – Sri Lanka was very difficult and Pakistan was the same thing; bubbles get breached and you have to leave,” Steyn told The Citizen on Tuesday.

While the 38-year-old admitted that he will miss the game too much to stay away for too long, for now he is looking forward to the freedom to enjoy all the outdoors and fun pursuits he enjoys.

“I will still be involved somewhere because cricket is all I know. I have skills to offer that I believe can help a good player become great, I just need to learn how to do that. But for now I might just let cricket slide a bit, I want to enjoy life for a while. As a player, I felt my hands were tied – I couldn’t just go skydiving because it wasn’t allowed by my contract.

“Covid has taken away a lot, but I’m looking forward to having the freedom every normal person has. I’ve always been with team-mates since I was 13/14 years old and I will miss that. But I’ve still got my dogs!” Steyn said.

Phepsi Buthelezi will return as captain for the Sharks in their Currie Cup rugby match against the Lions at Ellis Park on Saturday and he said a meeting with one of the leading referees had clarified for the squad that they have to improve their discipline and be better advertisers for a freeflowing game.

The Sharks will be looking to maintain their grip on second place against the last-placed Lions, following their victory over the Free State Cheetahs in Durban last weekend. But although the Cheetahs played with 14 men for most of the second half due to a red card, the Sharks kept them in the game with their own rampant ill-discipline, conceding far too many penalties and two yellow cards of their own in the tense closing stages.

That has to change, according to Buthelezi.

“We had Stuart Berry, who refereed our match against the Cheetahs, come chat to us and give us feedback. He told us that the way they are refereeing is to promote running rugby, which will be good for the product when people come back to stadiums. So that puts the defending team under the pump, but the biggest thing is our discipline, we can’t get sucked into silly errors.

“That just gave the Cheetahs life last weekend. So our main focus this week has been on keeping the number of penalties lower, that’s been a huge problem for us. It’s definitely a massive issue, something we’re constantly working on. We can’t afford to give away so many penalties, that made it hard for ourselves. The discipline issue is massive,” Buthelezi stressed.

Along with the in-form eighthman, halfbacks Grant Williams and Lionel Cronje, who played so well in the win over the Bulls two weeks ago, return to the starting line-up. Workhorse lock Le Roux Roets is going to take a break, allowing Gerbrandt Grobler to come in for his debut and Sharks coach Sean Everitt has rotated his hookers, with Dan Jooste starting and Kerron van Vuuren on the bench.

Although the Lions are out of contention for the semifinals, Buthelezi knows his team are going to have to put in a big effort to maintain their challenge for home-ground advantage in the playoffs.

“The Lions are obviously going to be desperate, they are a quality team who have just been unfortunate in terms of results, things just haven’t gone their way. We’re expecting them to have some main players back and they’ve been kicking a lot less lately, so that means lots of running and tackles. We are going to need to execute our game-plan, especially on attack, to put them under pressure,” Buthelezi said.

Sharks team – Anthony Volmink, Yaw Penxe, Jeremy Ward, Marius Louw, Thaakir Abrahams, Lionel Cronje, Grant Williams, Phepsi Buthelezi (c), Henco Venter, Dylan Richardson, Emile van Heerden, Gerbrandt Grobler, Lourens Adriaanse, Dan Jooste, Khwezi Mona. Bench: Kerron van Vuuren, Ntuthuko Mchunu, Wiehahn Herbst, Thembelani Bholi, Jeandre Labuschagne, Sanele Nohamba, Boeta Chamberlain, Murray Koster.

There was bad news on Tuesday for those critics who are for some reason disappointed in the spectacle provided by the series between South Africa and the British and Irish Lions because Springboks coach Jacques Nienaber said their next opponents – Argentina – are a side that is very adept at closing down the game as well.

The magnitude of the occasion typically led to three arm-wrestles, beautifully intense and gripping in their own way, between the Springboks and the Lions, who both favoured fairly conservative game-plans. Nienaber warned that playing against Argentina is going to be far from a free-for-all with the shackles released.

“Argentina are a tough team to play against, they have the ability to disrupt your flow as a team, they are really good at that. They have good plans that can really upset you. They are tactically astute and smart, they have a phenomenal defence and a great kicking game. They can also attack and score from turnovers, they have very quick wings and can create some magic.

“They are physical, defensively well-organised and willing to put their heads in dark places. They are well-balanced across the board, quality players playing for each other. Since the Rugby World Cup they have played seven Tests, six of them against big countries like New Zealand, Wales and Australia, and their only loss was to the All Blacks. Their world ranking [7^th] does not reflect how good they are,” Nienaber said on Tuesday.

While those who are bitter over the Springboks’ success have decried the quality of rugby played in the Lions series, Nienaber, enjoying the sweet taste of victory, said rugby had been the winner.

“It was tight! We’re very grateful for the series victory, the tour is such a special thing, happening only once over 12 years, and it could have gone both ways. It was a grind, but it’s the second biggest event in rugby after the World Cup. It was a humdinger of a series, which is what you want. In my opinion, rugby was the winner and there was only three points separating the teams at the end.

“The beauty of rugby is that there are different styles of playing, it would be unbelievably boring if we all played the same way. That means there are different tactics, like we had to employ at the World Cup going from Japan to Wales to England as opponents in the knockouts. The style teams play is determined by the athletic attributes of their players, you create a game-plan to amplify those characteristics,” Nienaber pointed out.

Where Aiden Markram should bat in South Africa’s T20 team, if he should be selected at all, is one of the biggest issues to solve for the Proteas ahead of the World Cup in the shortest format of the game in the United Arab Emirates in October.

When South Africa take on Ireland in the second T20 international in Belfast on Thursday evening, Markram is likely to once again bat at No. 4, having top-scored there with 39 off 30 balls in the impressive victory in the first match in Dublin.

• Why has this become an issue?

            With captain Temba Bavuma probably best-suited to opening the batting in T20 cricket, Quinton de Kock in wonderful form up top and Janneman Malan showing he also belongs in the team, there is little space for either Markram or Reeza Hendricks in the top three.
            But Markram has, albeit in just 10 innings, the best record of all of them (see stats box). There has been a dearth of consistent finishers in the middle-order though, so moving Markram down the order has been mooted as a solution.

 

• What does Markram need to do in order to change his game to suit the middle-order?

“I’m doing a lot of work on my power-hitting and being able to go to that without having faced a lot of balls. As an opener, you’re used to getting to that stage having spent quite a long time in the middle already. So it’s important that I develop a power game that I can go to earlier on, I’ve been training to be able to pull the trigger after maybe just a few balls in my innings.

“As a middle-order batsman, your roles change based on the situation, so I try to go in with a lot of intensity. In the nets I look for the boundary every ball, if that’s not on then get the one or get it into space for two; I need the confidence that if the ball is in my slot then I am able to get it away,” Markram said on Wednesday.

In terms of a perceived lack of faith in the depth of the Proteas batting line-up, Markram said while George Linde and Kagiso Rabada are both really good ball-strikers who the team have faith in, it is the set batsman who needs to take responsibility for the last five overs and bat deep.


Top-order candidates’ T20I records

Aiden Markram                    349 runs at 34.90, SR 151.08; 4×50 in 10 innings

Temba Bavuma                     338 runs at 26.00, SR 125.18; 0x50 in 14 innings

Quinton de Kock       1578 runs at 32.87, SR 138.05; 9×50 in 53 innings

Janneman Malan      241 runs at 24.10, SR 130.97; 1×50 in 10 innings

Reeza Hendricks       812 runs at 25.37, SR 121.37; 5×50 in 32 innings