Dale Steyn - The Best Ever?

He will go down as one of the best ever fast bowlers. He right up there with Allan Donald imo.

however Glen McGrath will always be the big dog which is no shame imo.

Steyn its fair to say is the best bowler in the world atm but McGrath is a legend, one of the greatest of all time

Courtney Walsh was also better than Dale Steyn

However your second to last paragraph is pure speculation and dismissing McGrath as too slow is bewildering to say the least. We can agree that Dale Steyn is an absolutely fantastic bowler but frankly the rest of the article is errant nonsense.
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McGrath was a good bowler but, to be honest, was very overrated.

This is largely due to his best performances coming vs England - leading to the UK media overhyping him. I've spoken to cricket fans from other countries & they don't rate McGrath all that highly.

The fact is, if you attacked McGrath, he had no answers - just look at how Vaughan dominated him every series they went head-to-head. He was simply too slow to turn the tide if a batsman started taking the game to him. He only operated at 77-82 mph, so you could score runs very easily with the hook & pull shots vs McGrath - even a green KP did it in 2005.

McGrath got his wickets through frustrating batsman into making mistakes, he couldn't 'rip' batsmen out the way Steyn, Akram & Co. could/can. He also always had scoreboard pressure to use, playing with Waugh, Gilchrist, Hayden etc.

Modern flat pitches is a complete myth. The time for the flat tracks was late 90s and early 00's and that's when the likes of Akram, McGrath, Ambrose, Donald, Waqar used to operate.
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That's not true. Pitches have become flatter.

A statistical analysis by CricInfo at the end of the last decade found that the batting average of a top order batsman had increased by 5 runs in 2000-09 from 1990-99.

Players like AB De Villers & Gautam Ghambir wouldn't have averaged 52 in the the 90s. The advent of T20 has made it harder for bowlers as well. The bowlers from before T20 could more easily exert pressure on batsmen.

Sinister if you look at cricketing homes like SA, England and NZ they have continued to provide bowler friendly wickets. Australia went away from this initially but have started to produce bowler friendly tracks.

India used to be very flat but now produce result wickets mainly for spinners while UAE has always been good for the seamers.

From my experience the late 90s and upto mid 00s we had some the flattest tracks imaginable. series Pak, India, SL were drawn tests with the odd win if you had the bowlers.

After the mid to late 00s we tend to see more result driven tracks and this is the time when Steyn came into prominence. He is my favourite bowler to watch especially when he is angry and sledging but the fact remains that he has been bought up in seamer friendly conditions while someone like Akram or Ambrose have had to play the majority of cricket on flat tracks.

AB is a class players but Gambhir had good stats because when he first came in India played Bangladesh a fair bit. Also if a batsman is to attack a bowler more it increases the bowlers chance of a wicket which is what happens now.

McGrath overrated

Steyn is a top quality bowler, but we need to keep in mind that he played 37/69 tests in SA and bagged 202/350 wickets in SA.

We all know SA pitches are the most lively and most pace friendly.

Look at Marshall's stats and you understand why many believe he is the greatest fast bowler of all time. He succeeded everywhere, even on the flattest pitches. He was deadly in England, but then he had tremendous success in India too. He never played against SL (weakest team then), BD and Zim.

Tbh you are talking complete balls.

How can McGrath be overrated when he bagged 563 wickets at 21.6? He has rightfully earned his rating.