Firstly, I like Shaun Pollock a lot. Not as technically pleasing or not as intimidating as White Lightning, but I think Polly was just as effective a bowler as Donald.
But anyway...Steyn - I find him a tough guy to rate. He's had very little competition for best fast bowler in the world. Mitchell Johnson, Zaheer Khan, Jimmy Anderson - all haven't been consistently good enough/healthy enough even though they are probably almost as talented as Steyn.
I'm not sure I personally like Steyn's methods either. He's pretty loose and gets hit for a lot of boundaries, despite his excellent strike rate. Maybe Waqar Younis would be the only guy who's been like that who you'd call a legend. Other guys in the loose, but good strikers category like Brett Lee, Shane Bond, Shoaib Akhtar, Simon Jones, Nantie Hayward, Mitchell Johnson, Steve Finn, Sreesanth, Darren Gough, Devon Malcolm - Steyn is a bit better than those guys, but I think the fact that he's similar to them makes me uneasy. It's fine when you have steady bowlers around you I guess. And I guess when it's said and done I'm a fan of more steady bowlers eg. McGrath, S.Pollock, Asif.
That said, tough to argue with that average though. He'll go down as a great, especially given the way he bowls - with good pace, movement and style. Plus he did well in Australia and India too, not easy places to succeed. I'd put him 3rd behind Donald and S.Pollock in SA history, though Peter Pollock and Neil Adcock might challenge that.
Interesting way to look at it. On the bolded points im in the opposite camp & i'm more of fan of the Steyn, Waqar, Gough, Akhtar type bowlers instead of your McGrath, S Pollock, Asif type bowlers.
S Pollock at his peak between 95-2001/02 (when he suffered that bad shoulder injury after the tour to AUS 01/02 which sent him downhill for the reamainder of the 2000s). Was unbelievably good
63 test: 261 wickets @ 20
I saw almost 80% of him during this period & one thing i always remember is that he technically wasn't that great a bowler the left-hander to be fair compared to Donald or his fellow metronome McGrath.
I have seen pretty much all of Steyn's peak (which if you take out those 3 test he playved vs ENG 2004 when he was young & raw). His peak from April 2006 - now
41 test: 216 wickets @ 22. A peak in which he raced to 200 test wickets faster than all the great bowlers quicks who attained 200 wickets except for Lillee & Waqar. By the time he plays 63 tests like S Pollock's peak he will probably have 300 test wickets.
So if we where picking a Saffies all-time XI Steyn unless his career starts plummiting from now on would get the nod over S Pollock fairly easily.
But one wonders what the likes of P Pollock, Le Roux, Procter,, Adcock, Van Der Bijl (he was like the S Pollock of the 80s) records could have been like if they had the oppurtunity to play more tests like Steyn. Since watching old footage of them bowling, talent wise Steyn & all of them are equal. Is just that Steyn record at the end of the day will have to give him preference over all of them.
---------- Post added at 03:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:01 PM ----------
200 wickets is a career, especially for a fast bowler. Getting to 400, even if he is not as good as he gets older and stiffer, would simply be a grand statement of longevity. If he could do so without shaking his records, he would stand atop his peers quite easily.
Maybe it's best to look at L&L bowlers like Pollock, Walsh or McGrath as being part of another era now, just like all the rest. Give current players a bit of a break from comparisons. Steyn's method, his strike rate and economy are perhaps as close as anyone comes to personifying modern cricket's zeitgeist. He capitalises on the way Test cricket is played, taking his opponents' aggression and bending it back on them with full force. Teams are loaded with impetuous strokemakers these days, many who are difficult to get a gauge on, but many of the best quicks at the moment echo Steyn; they're not water-tight, but they're there to get a bag.
It's not perfect. Like any human player, he's not always difficult to play, but I think that's the beauty of it. He has the heart to persist and not die wondering. I'm not going to spend my days wondering if Steyn was as good as Allan Donald (or worse, the likes of Procter and Le Roux), but I do think any praise he gets for surviving those killing fields we call pitches has been earned.
Ye well said. 200 wickets is career for quick & for Steyn who has taken his 200 so fast, one can say he is touching ATG status already. ENG hype Larwood until this day as great bowler & he barely took 78 test wickets.
On the point about Steyn methods personifying modern cricket's zeitgeist. Although thats true, his methods are not that unique to be fair.
Waqar, Gough, Lillee, Marshall, young Botham, Trueman, Imran, Wasim, Donald, Lindwall etc etc etc@ their peaks all bowled just like Steyn currently. Yea some of them had more bowler friendly tracks that Steyn over the course of their careers to bowl on (although Steyn has had a good share on greentops/bouncy decks to bowl on in the last 4 years). But his methods to deal with modern day flat pitches aren't that unique in that we can't compare him to past great fast-bowlers.
