England v South Africa, 2nd Test, Headingley, 2nd day

David Lloyd: England did not look like taking wickets

July 19, 2008

Ashwell Prince played a terrific innings, and his partnership with AB de Villiers has put South Africa right on top. In perfect batting conditions, James Anderson and Andrew Flintoff toiled very hard, but the rest were quite ineffective

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Comments have now been closed for this article The selectors really have to be held to account for the irresponsible handling of this game. The batting was also culpable. You get the feeling that the euphoria of Freddie's return was making people think that "anything goes", like he would just thunder in and take 5 for 40 no matter what. Vaughan should make Panesar, Pattinson and Broad do their workload, if we go for 600 runs and lose abysmally, so be it. What's worse, that or screwing up the health of the best player we've had for a generation? I only watched an hour yesterday, near close of play, but you could see that Freddie was absolutely cream crackered. Posted by danmcb on July 20 2008, 09:24 AM GMT All went wrong for England in the first day itself when sidebottom was ruled out and they selected darren who pattinson,,,, in my view they had plenty of good options to choose from why not select a player who has done brilliantly well for england.When you have got hungry fast bowlers like Hoggard, Harmison and Simon Jones in the wings you don't select a player who has not been tested at international level. Having said that England fought back beautifully after being bowled out for 203 to have south africa finish the day at 101/3 it would have been better had hashim amla didn't stay back for the third umpire's verdict. Second day only one team looked like they were going to run away with the test match and that was south Africa as no bowlers of england looked like taking wickets apart from freddie and anderson who looked threatening from time to time. Its a huge ask from now on for England they have to look at last test match and fight the same way as South Africans did to save match. Posted by Harryharan on July 20 2008, 04:43 AM GMT Top ^

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