After his school days at Marlborough College, where he played cricket, he proceeded to Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

[citation needed] Steel is mentioned in the opening article of the first issue of Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game.

Comparing bowlers of the Hambledon Era with those of the 1880s, the editor says that the "old bowling" must, as a rule, have been "quite plain" whereas most modern bowlers attempt to emulate Steel's expertise in "twisting the ball from both sides of the wicket", meaning Steel could bowl both off breaks and leg breaks.

[4] Soon afterwards, Steel set off for Australia with his Cambridge University friends Ivo Bligh and the Studd brothers George and Charles, and a team they had put together.

They are commemorated by the poem inscribed on the side of the urn:[4] Steel scored 135 at the Sydney Cricket Ground in a Fourth Test match arranged as an "extra" on that tour, in 1883.

[10] His son Allan Ivo Steel played a handful of first-class matches for MCC and Middlesex but was killed in the First World War.

[11] Another of his sons, Jack Steel, also died in the war after being washed overboard while on route to take command of HMS Munster.