Dale Steyn

Kyle Mills shames England

We expected England to lose. They’re an insipid outfit at the minute. We didn’t expect them to get thrashed though.

And they were thrashed. Getting bowled out for 110 is never too smart, but on this pitch it was jaw-dropping. Don’t let New Zealand’s 177-9 fool you. Runs were the only commodity they were interested in then. They didn’t care how many wickets were falling.

Kyle Mills took 4-7 with the new ball. Mills is a decent bowler – he’d have to be to take out an entire international top order for diddly – but is he THAT good? This was his tenth Test and while he now averages 25.58 with the ball, no fast-medium bowler should get figures like that unless the ball’s swinging a mile or the pitch looks like a cobbled street. Neither of those conditions applied here.

This England side reacts. It doesn’t act. Bowlers can attack with impunity if batsmen aren’t interested in runs, as was the case in both of England’s innings. And if your bowlers are content to wait for mistakes, they’ll not come – batsmen will just accumulate.

England let this match continually drift away from them from the moment they lost the toss. Sometimes you lose the toss. That’s the way it is.

New Zealand are a proper outfit, but they are one of the weaker Test nations. On their recent tour of South Africa, they failed to reach 200 in four Test innings. This was largely thanks to Dale Steyn. There’s a bowler who can inflict his will on the opposition.

Steyn’s recently been doing much the same in Bangladesh. The wickets didn’t suit pace, but he didn’t settle for figures that would be good ‘in the circumstances’. He sets his own standards. England take note. You need spectacular performances to win Tests and you also need them to give you some breathing room in case of a bad day.

If you’re almost always average, it’s only the shortest distance to ‘below average’.

New Zealand v England, first Test at Hamilton – day five
New Zealand 470 (Ross Taylor 120, Jamie How 92, Daniel Vettori 88, Brendon McCullum 51, Ryan Sidebottom 4-90)
England 348 (Paul Collingwood 66, Michael Vaughan 63, Tim Ambrose 55, Jeetan Patel 3-107)
New Zealand 177-9 declared (Stephen Fleming 66, Ryan Sidebottom 6-49, Monty Panesar 3-33)
England 110 all out (Kyle Mills 4-16, Chris Martin 3-33)
New Zealand won by 189 runs

Dale Steyn spoils things in a pleasing way

Despite Shiv’s bat and Dwayne Bravo’s best efforts with the ball, South Africa look like getting a first innings lead. This is a shame because while the Windies might continue to put up a fight while ahead, you feel that they’re liable to crumble if they fall behind. You never know, mind.

The architect of the West Indies’ destruction was Dale Steyn. This is good, because the world needs fast bowlers, but as we said above, it’s bad for the match. He took 4-60.

We used to work with someone called Dale. He was small and ginger and was allegedly training to be a wrestler. Not that his hair colour had anything to do with it – he was going bald, you see.

On a barely-related training note, we’ve recently started ‘running’ again. ‘Running’ appears to be a form of bouncing walk from what we’ve achieved thus far. We’re pretty sure we’re doing it right.

Despite having calf muscles that are so minuscule as to be invisible to the naked eye, this ‘running’ has led to stiffness and pain in that area far in excess of what might realistically justified by the muscle mass.

We mention this only because we’re a ‘pom’ and therefore obliged to whinge. This is the first opportunity we’ve had to fulfil that remit in the last two years.

Australians can talk anyway. Who else would ever whinge about their Test side winning too often and too easily? Now that’s REALLY making an effort to whinge. At least the English have got some worthwhile whinging subject matter.

This post’s rather gone off-topic, hasn’t it?

Dale Steyn’s bowling speed

We remember Dale Steyn’s Test debut. For his first wicket, he arced a yorker into Marcus Trescothick‘s middle stump. Not bad.

While he touched 90mph during that Test, it was rare and we sort of put him to the back of our mind in our mental draw marked ‘South African fast-medium’. It’s not a drawer we often feel like opening. As the series progressed, this seemed increasingly wise as Steyn failed to pick up more than two wickets in any of the six innings in which he bowled.

However, we’re taking Dale out of that boring drawer at the back now and moving him to one of the prime drawers – ‘fast bowlers who are good’ – it’s actually the top drawer. He’s on probation for the moment, but we want to give him a taste of this drawer in the hope that it’ll encourage him. Fast bowlers need encouragement right now.

While New Zealand’s batting line-up is currently a bit puny, Dale Steyn nevertheless managed to have consecutive ten wicket matches. Ten wicket matches are rare and even more so for fast bowlers. It was the culmination of some fairly steady improvement from Steyn.

We still had a slight concern though – is Dale Steyn actually a fast bowler or just fast-medium? We love fast bowlers, whereas fast-medium bowlers can sit in their drawer enduring Shaun Pollock‘s boring stories about when he used to be filed more sympathetically for all we care.

We watched some of the highlights of Dale Steyn’s recent wicket-taking exploits and praise be, he topped 90mph. In the King Cricket book of guidelines, if you bowl over 90mph, you’re fast. 89mph and we hate you for ruining the sport; 90mph and we’ll try and steal your sweatband for a keepsake. It’s a harsh and relatively meaningless distinction, but we abide by it.