SA tour of Eng, July 19 - Sept 12

[Arthur Crabtree]

150 partnership now.

[Durhamfootman]

game moving apace now. Foakes will be keen to get to his century before he runs out of partners

[Arthur Crabtree]

Leach bowling the fifth over.

England declaring their first innings.

Strange times.

[sussexpob]

Well done to the "Oakes", especially Ben which might help to move his career along.

Deano will be feeling a bit like Nasser Hussain at Brisbane, but if they set England a decent total, this pitch will dry and turn eventually, so I cant see many runs being scored in the 4th innings....

Yet very much England's test to lose now

[Durhamfootman]

I suppose if you want to play 2 spinners, then ideally you want to be bowling last. Definitely a mistake to choose to bat, but if England's bowlers had been off the boil on that first morning and SA had managed to get to lunch day 1 only a couple down, then it might have looked inspired

[Durhamfootman]

I noticed that SA lost their 6th and 7th wickets in the 31st over yesterday, so it's easy to assume that this was just after lunch, but with the speed that England bowl at it might have been 3pm, for all I know

[bigfluffylemon]

Obviously a shame Crawley and Bairstow couldn't go on after the hard work, and that we couldn't nick an opener out before the close, but other than that you couldn't ask for a better match position than this. Yet again this summer, 6 and 7 in the runs - once the ball gets 35-40 overs old, it seems virtually impossible to take wickets with it. Does suggest that if South Africa can weather the early storm, it could be a long day for England, but that's a big if.

[Durhamfootman]

ball is turning pretty big already, so if SA can muster any sort of defendable lead, it could be a very tricky 4th innings for England

[alfie]

ball is turning pretty big already, so if SA can muster any sort of defendable lead, it could be a very tricky 4th innings for England

That means making 400 though. Not impossible ; but I think England would be very disappointed if they let SA do that. I do think taking ten wickets will be a lot more of a challenge than day one , given the better batting conditions ; but SA need at least two bats to go very big to make any sort of a show of this.

Was an impressive effort from the two Bens , even if the softening ball and some baffling SA tactics made things a bit easier than the earlier batting had been. Best we've seen from Stokes for a while , both in game management and execution ; and an absolute top for Foakes

[Arthur Crabtree]

England chipping away.

Good chance it'll be another three day finish.

[Arthur Crabtree]

KP digging in though.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Robbo earning his cap at the end there.

Disappointing there was no wicket for Leach.

[Durhamfootman]

all happened very quickly in the end

Stokes bowled 14 overs in a single spell. Either side of tea, but I think only 2 overs of that were before tea.

Elgar confirmed that with the side they picked, they had to bat first no matter what the conditions

[Durhamfootman]

It'll be interesting to see if OT marks the end of the wild, mad, sh1t or bust approach of the new capt/coach. This felt like a much more considered approach to the match, where conditions were taken into account, where players took their time to get in a little more before teeing off and where the short ball seemed to be used more as a tool to get the ball reversing.

the first 4 tests of the year were wild and thrilling rides, but I approve of this slightly more thoughtful approach

[bigfluffylemon]

Classic test match approach, DFM. For some reason, it works.

Quite how teams go from innings loss to innings win in the space of a week baffles me. This sort of wild swing seems to happen more and more in test series, as they get so compacted to fit around the schedule of hit-and-giggle, along with the complete absence of meaningful warm up games. Still, win's a win, on to the decider, job well done England.

Six out of six games this summer won by the team batting second, will it be seven out of seven?