by Arunabha Sengupta
Phalaborwa is tucked away in the Mopani District Municipality, Limpopo province. The rivers Ga-Selati and Olifants meet almost exactly where the town is situated, halfway up along the eastern border of the Kruger National Park in the Lowveld.
The town is known for mining. It still houses the Palabora Mining Company, and boasts the widest man-made hole in Africa, a crater with a 2000 metre diameter.
The area itself is known as the Valley of the Olifants. Temperatures soar to intolerable levels in the summer. The mercury rises as far as 47°C. It is difficult to imagine someone moving at anything but a tardy amble here, let alone running in quick and honing his fast bowling skills over and over again under the tyrannical sun.
But, surprisingly for a region experiencing such extreme heat, the other claim to fame of the town is that from its unassuming quarters hailed the pace-bowling phenomenon called Dale Steyn.
It is perhaps the scorching heat that conditioned Steyn as one of the fittest athletes the game of cricket has seen. After all, an average of 24 and strike rate of 42.9 on the heartless Asian pitches take some doing.
It is may also be that his predominant and primary need to conserve every ounce of energy made Steyn abstain from the theatrics one has grown to expect from fast bowlers. There was no sneer, no snarl, no sledge, no scowl. There was aggression aplenty, but all of it in his action and delivery. His face, apart from the perpetual pinch approximating a faint frown, remained suited for a table laid out for professional poker players. Even the most diabolical swing at the most frantic of pace merely emitted a quizzical look from him, as if confused by his own dazzling repertoire.
He was genuinely fast, and swung at that remarkable pace, equally at ease with the traditional and reverse forms of the art. He could skid on and dart in, and his deliveries often veered away from the right hander at alarming angles.
That he could end up boasting the sixth best strike-rate in history of Test cricket — considering at least 2000 deliveries — became apparent only when one took the focus off his face and watched him run in with his excellent economical action and send down those wicked, poison tipped deliveries. None of the five who are above him in strike rate have played half the Tests he did.
439 wickets at 22.95, among pace bowlers only Glenn McGrath has taken more at a cheaper return.
Dale Steyn was born on 27 June 1983.