 After a thrilling last gasp draw from England in the first Test match at Centurion,
South Africa will be sharpening their claws at Kingsmead in Durban for
the second game of the series. The match will be played on the Boxing Day, that
is on the 26th of December.
The first game looked to be heading towards a draw before the English side
pressed the panic button and lost their last five wickets for 13 runs in 11
overs to leave the tourists struggling to eke out a draw. However, the game,
by itself had been a good advertisement for Test match cricket, as the fortunes
fluctuated between the two sides right from the first day when Andrew Strauss
had won the toss and rather strangely decided to field first.
Click for Live Score Card of South Africa vs England
The first Test match had begun without too much rancour, but whatever transpired
in the game would mean that the two sides will be gunning for glory in the second
game. On their part, the South African captain, Graeme Smith, expressed
surprise at the kind of celebrations that followed the drawn game. However,
more than that, he ended up accusing Jonathon Trott of wasting time before facing
every delivery, something for which the batsman had received an official warning
during the ODIs.
With the umpire review system also having caused issues for both the sides,
after the English side had accused South Africa of taking their own sweet time
in deciding to go for the referral, the second Test match can be expected to
be a little more charged up going into it.
Having said that, the English skipper Andrew Strauss will be both, happy and
bitter about the batting performance of his side. Most of the top-order batsmen
including himself got starts, while Kevin Pietersen also exhibited enough
to say that he was back in form with his 40 and 81. However, none of the English
batsmen managed a century, thus not converting the starts well enough into a
big score, whereas the highest individual score for England belonged
to Graeme Swann - a number nine batsman. Ian Bell's place in the side will be
in jeopardy after an obnoxiously funny dismissal in the first innings and a
low score in the second.
On the other hand, South Africa will need to buckle up their bowling. What
had started out in the Champions Trophy as their issue, has failed to
rectify, as the opposition were able to get out jail twice in the game - after
being 221/7 and 27/3 respectively in the two innings.
It does look like we could be in for another exciting game next!
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