Quote from: Villan For Life on January 04, 2016, 03:52:38 PMIt really is lousy pitch. We've not helped ourselves by dropping chances, but here we are about 10 minutes before stumps on day 3 and the aggregate score is just under 1,000 for 9 wickets. That is not a good advert for test cricket.I agree, the drops can't be downplayed though, drops on a pitch like this are the difference between a win and a draw.The other important thing today is that it shows the real value of having a few players who are willing and able to get the scoreboard moving, they've faced more deliveries than us but they're still 70 short of a follow on (which we'd never enforce anyway). By putting a huge score on quickly we gave ourselves a sniff of winning but forced them to go into their first innings fighting to save a draw.
It really is lousy pitch. We've not helped ourselves by dropping chances, but here we are about 10 minutes before stumps on day 3 and the aggregate score is just under 1,000 for 9 wickets. That is not a good advert for test cricket.
We need an 'injury' and to get Jordan on at slip, because Anderson doesn't seem to be picking the ball up at the moment.
The dropped catches that have cost England so dearly were attributed by Steven Finn to the difficulty fielders had in picking up the ball out of the backdrop of the colourful crowd. Hashim Amla was dropped twice by England yesterday, once by James Anderson on 76 and then by Nick Compton when he had scored 120. “It’s not easy to see the ball here,” Finn said. “The ground and the crowd are very much in line from where the ball comes from. The level of the crowd, and the colours in the crowd, you just lose it in there. “When the ball gets a bit older and darker, it just blends in with the crowd — even the one that fell just short of me at mid-off, I didn’t pick it up until it was halfway towards me. No catch is an easy catch here, I suppose. Compo definitely struggled to pick his up. I think square of the wicket particularly, out on the boundary and for your close catchers, it’s hard to see. Hopefully, tomorrow morning, if we do get chances, we’ll see them.” Finn was adamant that England can win. “There are still smiles on people’s faces in the dressing room, knowing we’re a long way ahead, having bowled very well,” he said. “We’ll bowl worse than that and take more wickets. But the wicket had lost some of its first-day nip, and is a bit slower. “We haven’t let South Africa get away from us, so we’ll come back and try and hit them hard, and with a good session tomorrow morning who knows what might happen. It was a tricky day but I thought we stuck to our guns very well. We created a couple of chances, changed our fields, our pace, our lengths suitably for the wicket, trying to make something happen; I thought there were half-chances.” Finn expressed happiness with his bowling after finishing with figures of one for 82 in 26 overs. “I feel in good rhythm,” he said. “When the captain asked me to bend my back and put a little bit extra in, I did. It was just about trying to create pressure and make something happen on that wicket. One person has been got out on it by a good delivery — every other batsman has contributed to their own downfall. “So we have to keep trying to force mistakes and play attritional cricket, and I think we’ve done that really well so far. Today we really had to manufacture something through building pressure, through changing pace, lengths and trying to do anything to create that opening.” It was Finn, England’s best bowler on the day, who posed the biggest threat. In an outstanding spell in the first hour, he came very close to removing AB de Villiers twice in the same over. First, he came within inches of taking a return half-chance offered by De Villiers when he got an inside edge on to his boot. The ball lobbed up tantalisingly towards Finn on his follow-through, and although he tried to get his hands under the ball, he just failed to. Then, De Villiers, surprised by extra bounce, could not keep a pull shot under control and was almost caught at square leg. Even at the end of a long and arduous day in the field, Finn was running in hard. Rousing himself for one last spell, despite operating into a breeze, he extracted extra bounce from back of a length in what was a quick over. It required all of Amla’s skill to survive, dropping his wrists to avoid being gloved. “Hash is a world-class player,” Finn said. “To see him book himself in on that wicket, it’s hard to bowl to him sometimes. We did trouble him occasionally, and he didn’t look comfortable 100 per cent of the time, and that’s testament to the way we bowled.” Faf du Plessis paid tribute to “a real good wicket” and accepted that confidence among the batsmen had been low after the 3-0 trouncing in India where South Africa failed to score heavily. “We needed a day like this, and I hope this is the turning point for everyone to get their confidence back. We plan to bat as long as possible.”
Amla is a really admirable character, well done to him. Du Plessis gone as well. There's the smallest glimmer of hope.
South Africa are absolutely flying here.
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Topic: The Cricket Thread 2016 (Read 501247 times)
