Comment: Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer

Cape Town – It is tempting to brand it Dale Steyn’s equivalent feat to a certain wrong-footed, World Cup-winning dropped goal in rugby.

Deep in extra time of the 2003 RWC final, of course, England’s Jonny Wilkinson caught the Wallabies off-guard in a split second of inspiration, breaking the deadlock decisively with his immortal effort off his infinitely less natural right foot.

Before Monday in Nagpur, South African strike bowler Steyn, while hardly a one-trick pony, was generally most renowned for his lethal out-swingers at pace.

Suddenly, though, shell-shocked India – and the world, too – have learned of his new-found ability to bend the ball the other way on a sustained basis.

The result was carnage, with the Proteas now handsomely placed to strike for a big win over the ICC’s No 1-ranked side after an eventful day three of the first Test.

Thanks to Steyn’s almost out-of-the-blue spell of destruction, which netted him seven wickets in India’s insipid first innings and the precious additional one of in-form Virender “Boom Boom” Sehwag in the follow-on, India remain a distant 259 runs behind the ruthless tourists with eight wickets in hand.

Perhaps only the great Sachin Tendulkar, who had scrapped his way to a subdued, unbeaten 15 off 48 balls by the close, stands significantly in the way of South Africa going 1-0 up with one to play.

With the home side severely missing injured stalwarts Rahul Dravid (their own bedrock version of Jacques Kallis), Yuvraj Singh and VVS Laxman, the little maestro has it all to do to keep the Proteas at bay – and keep in mind that he has a strangely mediocre record against these opponents on Indian soil.

But if most people don’t like Mondays, then MS Dhoni’s side doubtless detest them even more now, thanks to Steyn’s magical burst of reverse and conventional in-swing bowling.

India’s first innings spectacularly unravelled in a 37-minute period after tea, where they slid from the relative sanctuary of 221 for four, in reply to the Proteas’ beefy 558, to 233 all out.

For sheer suddenness, it was all very Waqar Younis-like … the great Pakistani toe- and timber-hunter would have been proud of Steyn’s post-interval salvo of 3.4-2-1-5.

Certainly the 26-year-old Phalaborwa Express, albeit with many years of good cricket ahead of him, will be hard-pressed to repeat a dose like that, even as he registered a personal best innings return of 7/51 in 16.4 overs.

A sign of his burgeoning nous, in his 37th Test, was that he basically let the ball do the talking, operating as pacemen often do on the Subcontinent in the high 130s in kilometres/hour terms rather than bending his back too much to crank it into the mid-140s we know he is capable of on tracks that boast greater carry.

He proved that you can still be lethal and intimidating at those reduced knots; several of the Indian tail-enders didn’t especially fancy getting into line against him, did they?

It seemed fitting that back in the SuperSport studio in Johannesburg was one Fanie de Villiers, an illustrious swing bowler of two decades back whose match-winning 6/43 at Sydney is the stuff of local folklore.

“That’s the first time Dale’s taken so many wickets swinging it his wrong way,” correctly observed De Villiers. “We’re wanting to encourage reverse swing (among South African bowlers) … and that’s beautiful bowling.”

Since his return to fullest fitness, after a frustratingly nagging hamstring injury, midway through the recent home series against England, Steyn has simply gone from strength to strength, and in three Tests so far in 2010 – including the present, incomplete one at Nagpur – he sports 21 wickets.

You would expect that startling tally to rise further before South Africa even shift their base to Kolkata …