Julio the Crocodile Hunter

Sara has sent in a very fascinating link to an interview with Dale Steyn at Cricinfo. It is revealing, to say the least. They have used the infamous picture of AB and Dale (of Love Saga fame) to accompany what is at times a funny interview. Funny in that you will laugh at Dale.


Take, for example:

I caught a crocodile not so long ago and it was a total accident... I can write about it in my book one day.

Talk about confidence and planning for the future, Dale Steyn's already got a bestseller mapped out in his head, to be titled: The Steyninator 101, a sort of glorified choose-your-own-adventure story of his life in which you battle mutant cows and overgrown cane toads.

My grandparents call me Champ. All my team-mates call me Julio. AB de Villiers gave it to me about five years ago and it just stuck. There is no real reason for it.

That's just real Love Saga material. Having insider nicknames for each other. "Julio" is a combination of both "Juliet" and "Romeo". BET YOU NEVER KNEW THAT. See, this is why I'm here. To tell you this stuff. I thought Steynki was enough, but apparently we now have to deal with a Julio as well.

Which cricketer would you pick to go with on a trip into the wild?
Actually I'll have to take both Morkel brothers - Albie and Morne. All three of us enjoy fishing, and they have a long history going into the bush and stuff like that, so they know their way around in the wild.

Strangely bizarre, sounds like Albie and Morne had a horrible childhood in which their manic father would regularly take them for trips into the wild to hunt tigers. He had a moustache and to this date, whenever Albie or Morne see a person with a stache they are reminded of their father and the bits of deer that used to be permanently lodged above his lip from eating raw meat in the jungle.

But a better story would be one of Morne and Albie being trained in the sounds of the jungle, clicking their tongues and waiting for the response from the wild animals to tell them which way is north. Or better yet, a Tarzan-style knowledge of the wild to accompany Julio's wild rampages as he chases deer over land, trying to become a Deer Hunter too. Robert De Niro was always his favourite actor.

If you were to play James Bond, who would you pick as the female lead? Not counting your girlfriend.
You're gonna have to put my girlfriend, purely because she is an actress. Jeanne Kietzmann is her name and you need to put it down. Otherwise Natalie Portman, because she looks similar.

I do believe they said "not counting your girlfriend" or maybe he thought they'd just stuck that in there for no reason and that they didn't know Jeanne was an actress. However, the rather interchangeable Jeanne is odd. It's kind of creepy going around and figuring out which actress your girlfriend looks like. Maybe it's on Jeanne's CV: "Looks like Natalie Portman."

Tell us about one sledge you will never forget.
I still remember what Matthew Hayden said in my very first Test against Australia, last year in Perth. I bowled the first ball of the match to Simon Katich and it ran wide and Mark Boucher took it in front of first slip. Hayden turned around and said I was going to be so nervous the whole game that I would bowling wides for the rest of the game. I shot back saying, "I doubt that I'm the nervous one because I don't have to come a day before the Test and sit in the middle of the pitch and try and visualise where I'm going to score my first runs." It was an interesting chat we had.

Good one. Did it take you all of half an hour to say that? And who's willing to bet Haydos didn't understand a single word of it, especially if Julio said it in a retarded saffa accent.

Imagine Steyn all proud of himself for coming up with an irritatingly long "insult" and looking rather pleased with himself afterwards even though he was the only person who understood it. And imagine him thinking it was such a clever response he decided to recite it word for word to a reporter 6 months later, citing it as the "one sledge you'll never forget".

If you want a real sledge, take Eddo Brandes vs. McGrath:
"Why are you so fat?"
"Because everytime I make love to your wife, she gives me a biscuit."

Or even Arjuna Ranatunga replying to Ian Healy's classic "Bowl a Mars Bar half way down...We'll get him stumped." with a particularly hilarious, "Nah, Boonie fielding at short leg will be onto it before I can move."

But "I doubt that I'm the nervous one because I don't have to come a day before the Test and sit in the middle of the pitch and try and visualise where I'm going to score my first runs" ?

That's Julio the Crocodile Hunter for you.