South Africa in England July-Sept 2012

[Doodlesweaver]

If S Africa continue to build on this result, we could be on the verge of seeing the first true # 1 team, since the decline of Australia in 2006/07.

They have the best balanced test team in the world on paper, although maybe they may need a find a pure keeper, if De Villiers with the gloves doesn't work out.

Can be no question now that Dale Steyn also is one of the all-time great fast bowlers. At this rate he will reach 300 test wickets faster than legendary fast-bowlers such as Hadlee, Marshall, Imran, McGrath, Donald and Trueman fo eg, if he claims his 21 more wickets in his next 6 tests, which is truly amazing.

For England i'm not sure how to view this defeat. Clearly this it strongest team they have faced since their era of dominance in the 2010/11 Ashes, so they need to take their game to the next level.

As Nasser Hussain was saying on commentary, Amla/Smith did to England in that partnership, what ENG did to Australia in Brisbane 2010. So i'm willing to look at it as a one-off.

The interesting thing is will what will be the changes. Steve Finn has to come in really to give the England attack, that 90 mph option.

Even if Finn comes in also, given the strength of Saffies batting, i think England should SERIOUSLY consider picking 5-bowlers also, although it may expose their batting to the Saffies lethal bowling attack.

But i say do this because clearly the # 6 batting spot in England is full on conjecture. I dont trust Bopara as a test player and can be confident from a English perspective that county cricket two inform batsmen in Nick Compton or James Hildreth can make a difference in this high profile series?

I saw throw a 5-man attack at Saffies, with the aim of keeping their batting in check, even if our batting gets exposed too. This way at it will turn the final two test into bowler dominated events and it will take some individual batting brilliance from both sides to come out on top.

So my 2nd test team:

Strauss, Cook, Trott, KP, Bell, Prior, Bresnan, Broad, Swann, Anderson, Finn.

I think you could try putting the hard word on one of the openers rather than dumping on the no 6 batsman all the time. Strauss has had - quite frankly - a shite 2 years run averaging around 34. Had a huge opportunity to pull his team out of the mire at the Oval on a pitch that was doing sweet fa and played a dumb and most unskipper-like shot.

He's 35 and I'm sure Cook could do just as conservative a job as skipper. Strauss should genuflect towards his bowlers every morning and twice on Sunday as they have kept him in his job.

 

[puddleduck]

I happen to fully agree that Strauss is no longer good enough and would love to see England let Cook take over and begin to lead a new team and era like SA did with Smith all those years ago. In the short form captaincy has seen him excel as a batsman.

 

[Sulaiman7]

Will we able to see Finn in 2nd test match ?

 

[War]

Ye no doubt Strauss has been poor for a while and is basically being carried/back based on the previous good work he did as captain etc.

But his captaincy isn't noted for its tactical ingenuity like Vaughan, so indeed Cook could certainly take over.

However unlike the # 6 spot, their isn't any openers on the county circuit that i would say is making a compelling case to be picked.

According to county form Joe Root and Joe Denly are the form options, while Mark Carberry is around. Are they test quality/ready for test cricket?

Another option may be to pick one of Compton or Hildreth and reshuffle the batting line-up i.e opening with Trott. But do we really want to do this to the settled batting line-up?

A bit of dilemma developing here if lets say if Strauss continues his struggles in the next test.

 

[Sulaiman7]

And I can not understand why Monty Panesar has been dropped by England altough he does great break-throughs and was and may be if he will play now is a brilliant left arm orthodox bowler , England should've bought Monty Panesar so they have a good spinning variety and also a good attack can be set by Swann and Panesar .

 

[puddleduck]

As long as the team is winning, the captain always gets cut some slack when they're not scoring runs. Indefinable qualities like leadership skills and tactics are touted in place of runs or wickets. Failure to score runs or engineer victories against top class opposition will surely put the spotlight firmly on the runs.. or lack thereof.

 

[Satan666]

Good all round effort by South Africa, a crushing victory for them.

 

[Sulaiman7]

Andrew Strauss has been one of the greatest batsman for England and captain as England is still no.1 position in test and Cook's captincey in odi and his perform is marvelous but I think they should now give Strauss a rest and let Cook handle captaincey for a year and look how Cook performan in test matches as a captain as he as proved that he has a lot of experience and a lot will come and I think that Cook will be the run score leader one time and will stay captain of England for long time .

 

[sifter132]

I'm not ready to start worshipping all South Africans and bagging the English just yet. It's only 1 Test. Only a handful of South Africans did well, and I don't think any of the English would be happy with their performances. Talk to me about best teams in the world at the end of the series please.

But breaking my unbiased response for a sec...I will say it's good to see England get hammered though

 

[Owzat]

Difference between England and South Africa was England helped the South African bowlers WAY too much. A draw was there for the taking, nothing shots cost England - Bell hanging his bat out, Strauss and Prior senseless sweeps, Bopara a poor shot dragging on just a few of the avoidable dismissals.

Go back to the 1st innings and same story, I was annoyed at C5 commentator Hughes I think it was who said England were unlucky which implied that was the difference, but whoever was co-commentating quickly repaired any damage done. Aggers knows who let the side down, you don't lose by "bad luck" when a side scores 600+ for two wickets and you are beaten by an innings without breaking 400.

BBC Sport - Jonathan Agnew: Batsmen let England down at The Oval

A lot of good points, but this is a key for me. England having it too easy for a long time, when things go their way they are world beaters, but if it requires attritional batting or when you need the bowlers to save the day then they come up short.

"It's not good shot selection and that has been the difference. Against good teams like South Africa, you get knocked off. "



Strauss has come out with an ill advised and obviously not researched come knowledgeable comment :

"Our attack has taken 20 wickets in almost every game during the last two years"

BBC Sport - England will recover from South Africa loss - Andrew Strauss

Actually I questioned that the nanosecond I heard it. Was he not on the UAE tour?!?!? I'll take the two years as literal to the day, but even if you go back to non-literal he is wrong, wrong and very wrong at that.

29/07/10-24/07/12
P25 W14 D4 L7 >>> 20 wickets = 17/25 (68%)

03/01/10-24/07/12
P31 W18 D5 L8 >>> 20 wickets = 22/31 (71%)

I could go into more possible variations on "two years", but since we've only taken 20 wickets 10 times in the past 15 Tests going back only to Sri Lanka's tour of England in 2011, his claim falls apart no matter what. We did it six times in a row, might be why he's claiming it, and it probably "feels" like it - to him. He'd be better off admitting there is room for improvement, that under any kind of pressure we crumble and only dominate when the opposition are weak, not at their best, or we just 'click'.

Our batsmen have a terrible tendancy to throw their wickets away, that our bowlers and batsmen are as good as they have been for any time throughout the past 20 years helps enormously. Arguably the best side was the one we had for the South Africa tour of 04/05 and Ashes 2005 before it suffered the Jones injury and slowly broke up.

 

[Doodlesweaver]

I'm not ready to start worshipping all South Africans and bagging the English just yet. It's only 1 Test. Only a handful of South Africans did well, and I don't think any of the English would be happy with their performances. Talk to me about best teams in the world at the end of the series please.

But breaking my unbiased response for a sec...I will say it's good to see England get hammered though

I agree, England will come back in the next test for sure.

 

[jacobfelix]

England have themselves to blame for this defeat...after being right on top at the end of Day 1...they should have played sensibly on Day 2 and try to get a 470-530 score and try to put pressure on SA ....not easy though but still sometimes on seeing a 500+ first innings score, SA mindset would have been different especially what with Alviro falling early....

Even then, after SA declared.....losing 4 wkts itself at end of Day 4 proved costly

 

[venom2011]

I'm looking forward to a much closer contest in the next game. I certainly expect the English batsmen to step it up a gear and generally be a lot tighter. Their bowling unit is a bit of a concern though.

As I've said before, Swann will struggle as SA's three best players of spin are right-handers, and the other two seamers don't offer much support to Anderson. Bopara as 5th is nothing more than a medium-paced trundler. And none of them can match the pace of Steyn and Morkel.

Although I would say that no player deserves to be dropped after one bad test, I would drop Bresnan and give that boy Finn a go simply because of ineffective that bowling unit was. There can be no substitute for pace and aggression on such pitches.

 

[swacker]

Cheers Ravi.

I never feel confident with him at the crease.

 

[Haarithan]

Interesting observation I'd made while going to bed yesterday is that I couldn't recall the previous time a test match involving England and South Africa had the side batting first emerge victorious:

The ones (series) I've followed:

2008 - RSA's tour of England (England 1-2 South Africa, 4 tests)
2009 - England's tour of RSA (South Africa 1-1 England, 4 tests)
2012 - RSA's tour of England (England 0-1 South Africa, 1 test)

Was it during the 2004-05 tour of South Africa then (when England won 2-1)?