There will be many Dale Steyn stories told over the next while as the country and the world reflect on an extraordinary Test cricketer and a man.
They will write and speak of him thundering in at the Wanderers at full puff, bowling at warp speed 10, batting forever with JP Duminy on that magical day in Melbourne in 2008.
Steyn has always marched to a different drummer, making his own beat, forging his own path. He’s a bowler, a skateboarder, a fisherman and a surfer. He loves his music hard and fast, and a little different.
He embraced the countries he went to, made time to play street cricket with kids. In Jeffrey’s Bay a few years ago, Steyn was taking part in the Oakley X-Over, a multisport fun event involving the likes of Butch James, John Smit, SoldierBoy and Greg Minnaar.
Down at a parking lot near the beach, a few kids shyly walked up to Steyn with bat and ball. In no time at all, Steyn had organised a game, bowling, batting and joking. Those boys will talk of that day forever.
My Steyn story involves cricket boots and underpants. Before the 2011 Cricket World Cup, Stuart Hess, the cricket writer at The Star, and I had been asked if we could take over some new footwear for Steyn and Wayne Parnell from their sponsors.
I squeezed a new pair of cricket boots into my bag. To save space, I used an old trick, and rolled up my underpants and put them inside the boots. I posted it on social media and got a few laughs. They were new undies.
We flew into New Delhi via Dubai, where SA would take on the West Indies at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium. We were staying at The Imperial on the Janpath boulevard near Connaught Place. The hotel’s history is long and rich.
Here’s a steal from the website: “From the time it opened its doors in the 1930s, when India was beginning to write the last chapters of its saga on independence, there was little space in New Delhi for an Indo-British rubbing of shoulders. The Imperial provided such a space.
“Pandit Nehru, Mahatama Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Lord Mountbatten met at The Imperial under congenial conditions to discuss the partition of India and creation of Pakistan. The Nehru family had a permanent suite here.”
Our travel agent had scored an incredible deal to get us into The Imperial. I’d stayed there the year before for the Commonwealth Games. Hess still reckons it is the best hotel he has ever stayed at in India.
The service is incredible, from the barmen in the 1911 bar where we entertained Graeme Smith one evening, to the doorman, who would greet me with “Hakuna matata” after he found out I was from SA. On our first evening, the room service fella spied the cricket boots on my bed and asked about them.
“They are Dale Steyn’s,” I told him, knowing this would lift my status in the hotel. He took a closer look at the boots and then back to me. “Dale Steyn wears Jockey?”
I took out the pairs of offending underpants before putting the boots in my bag the next day. We would see the Proteas at the Feroz Shah Kotla where they would be interacting with kids with HIV/Aids.
The New Delhi police are a special breed, an ugly mix of incompetent and officious. They would not let us in. They played silly buggers until someone called someone. Then they shepherded us to the ground, lest we escape.
I spied Corrie van Zyl and Henning Gericke, and stepped out of the circle of cops, took the boots out of my bag and asked them to please hand them over to Steyn. The cops weren’t best pleased.
Eventually, we were okayed to walk on to the field to watch the players and the kids, and sneak a look at the pitch before we were chased off by a groundsman. Then, out of the blue, I heard my name being howled over and over. I looked up at the team’s changing room.
There was Steyn, shouting, holding up his boots in one hand, and in the other, a pair of Woolies jocks, which he was waving from side to side. He was laughing hard. I blushed hard. He draped them over the balcony, where they stayed all afternoon.
I never got them back. I miss those undies. I’ll miss Steyn, too.
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