South Africa’s miserable quarterfinal exit from the World Cup in March hurt every player in the side in equal measure but, as George Orwell taught us in Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others.
Dale Steyn wears his heart on his sleeve. Whether it’s anger or outrage, humour or joy, he rarely sees the point in containing his feelings.
On the field he has been censured and was even fined his entire match fee during a Test against the West Indies when provoked into a bout of particularly unseemly behaviour by Bajan spinner Sulieman Benn. But mostly his outbursts are of care, affection and tolerance.
After the defeat by New Zealand in Dhaka Steyn eventually retired to his room well after midnight and began packing for a hastily organised departure home barely five hours later. Unable to sleep, he began replying to the many voice and mail messages of consolation from friends and family.
His attention was drawn to a tweet sent soon after the game by a young (but as yet uncapped) player back in South Africa, who has genuine and well-warranted aspirations to play for South Africa. In it he suggested that Smith’s team was no different from those gone by — they were “chokers”.
Steyn was apoplectic with rage but, with nobody appropriate or close enough to bear the brunt of an outburst, he was forced — uncharacteristically — to bottle his ferocity. Unlike most people, it’s strength was undiminished when the cork was finally removed almost six months later when the unfortunate and unsuspecting youngster was invited to join the national squad at a pre-season gathering organised by new coach Gary Kirsten of past, present and future players at the Arabella Golf Resort.
When Steyn finally came face to face with his target he told him in no uncertain terms: “As long as I’m in the national team, you will never play for South Africa.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say, of course. Steyn has absolutely no say in team selection and wouldn’t want one. But it was just about the most hurtful and angry thing he could say to the careless youngster and he delivered the message — much as he had done with Benn — with spit flying from his mouth. Besides, the anger had been fermenting for half a year.
So why did Steyn look so angry on the first day of the Newlands Test against Australia on Wednesday? Surely the Twitter incident was out of his system? Indeed, it was. But there was another reason and it’s necessary to rewind to the end of 2008 to discover what it was.
South Africa arrived in Perth for the three-Test series against Australia, which they so famously won, with Steyn in awe of how much emotion and memory players like Jacques Kallis, Graeme Smith and Mark Boucher still carried from the preceding series, in 2005, when Australia won two-nil in what could so easily have been a very different story if a couple of marginal elements had worked in their favour rather than against it.
Until then, he had been a “happy-go-lucky” boy from Phalaborwa who lived in the moment and then let it go in anticipation of the next big moment.
He was in awe of the way Kallis, in particular, was intent on using the pain of defeat to inspire the victory that heals. “Some things are right and some things are wrong,” said Kallis. “And it’s wrong that we lost last time. It needs to be made right.”
That sentiment was exactly what inspired Steyn during a brilliant bowling display on Wednesday. But this time, it was his own memory of defeat that was inspiring him. Australia virtually followed the Proteas home at the beginning of 2009 and extracted a great deal of consolation during a revenge series victory by the same margin, 2:1.
Just like the World Cup campaign, it hurt Steyn more than most, but this time for a specific reason. He performed poorly.
Coach Mickey Arthur rewarded his heroics in Australia with a fortnight of complete rest on the team’s return to the country and Steyn took himself off to his beloved bush. But he returned to action far too late and never came close to his best form. By the time he did, South Africa were two-nil down. It made him very angry.
Having learned from Kallis how to store angry emotion and use it as performance “fuel”, and having had his own experience of that process thanks to Twitter, he was in good shape to call upon the anger of that defeat two-and-a-half years ago to make life difficult for the Australians this time around.
There is a very long way to go, but if Smith and Kallis are able to match Steyn’s revenge-inspired performance with the bat, revenge is likely to be what they get.