Dale Steyn brings an uncommon freshness to his profession of fast bowling, a sense that he is a human being of normal height and build at once amazed and disturbed by his ability to take someone’s head off with a shiny, stitched orb, writes Telford Vice in the Johannesburg-based Mail & Guardian.

Not for him the mustachioed madness that Merv Hughes and Dennis Lillee brought to cricket along with all that biker leather and the brazenly bared chests and big hair that, 30 years ago, might have been a hit at your friendly neighbourhood gay bar.

Steyn is certainly no English fop in the way of Graham Dilley, but rather that than the Poms’ modern yob squad, represented by the likes of Andrew Flintoff -- who else would answer to the nickname of a prehistoric cartoon character? -- and Steve Harmison, who, in the words of former England coach Duncan Fletcher, “gets homesick when he fetches the paper from his postbox”.

There is nothing remotely Ambrosial about Steyn, a fact that might melt Curtly’s permanent glare just a touch, and he is probably not in danger of waggling his noggin in the way that Waqar Younis would when a screaming yorker veered from outside off-stump all the way to the fine leg boundary.

No matter, because what connects all these fine bowlers is a dash of the quick stuff: speed, and not the kind that will get you arrested.

Also read Vata Ngobeni writing in the Independent Online on the Andre Nel issue.