Cricket

[Shaggy]

This is great from Wood and Broad

[Cormack74]

Yeah ignore me

[Zapater]

**** my life. Going to the wanderers for 30 years. First time I'm fully embarrassed about our team. Left early, even the people there, 16 year old wanting to get pissed. Didn't watch a ball...

[Cormack74]

Shame. You missed some good England bowling

[Zapater]

Shame. You missed some good England bowling

Nope, saw the best batsmen since Bradman get dismissed for 6 in the pub.

PS the Web Ellis is still ours.

[Cormack74]

Poor Temba.

[Zapater]

If these are the best bowlers when a couple go missing, it's quite worrying. Paterson and Hendricks don't look cut out for it. I think Pretorius is pure ****, bowls dibbly dobblies and below par with the bat. Elgar's a grafter but hasn't done it in this series, not sure what's up with him. Clearly du Plessis doesn't have the heart for this anymore, he's lost his fight.

Out of the current players only Rabada, Nortje, de Kock, Maharaj and Elgar are up to it and need to be the core of the set up. Would pay Kyle Abbott whatever it takes to get him back for his twilight years. Would also look into Rossouw and van Zyl - I don't rate them at all either, but surely better than what's coming through domestically.

[Cormack74]

Much better from SA this morning until the last 10 minutes.

[Cormack74]

From the BBC:

If South Africa lose this match, it would be the first time they have lost eight out of nine Tests since before World War One.

Yikes

[Zapater]

Good character with the ball yesterday, too little too late though. Game is completely gone, have to set some targets moving forward. Something like score over 350, take the game into tomorrow and have someone in the top 6 getting a 100. Whatever they are, that's what should be the gauge internally, because there's no way they're batting 2 days out or scoring 450+

From the BBC:
Yikes

What's even more shocking about that is that we were beating India and Australia in series before that. How the mighty have fallen. Guess losing Amla, AB, Morkel with Philander going, Faf out of form and the way out would make a dent in any team.

Smith said that they're going they're going to discuss the Kolpak situation with the ECB to try to find some solutions - it's really cannibalised the game. That list above is frightening and doesn't include poached players who played for England like Dawid Malan and Keaton Jennings for example. Even though I don't think most of those players improve the Proteas starting XI, it would make domestic competition much better resulting in better players.

Then we get back to politics and could ask would most those players be playing domestic cricket here because every team is forced to select a minimum of 4 black African players per game. Bavuma is the only one on the list who fits that category. So that's 7 spots for other players per franchise per game which means you couldn't fit all of those players into the structure with the existing player pool.

[Yozza]

260-7...

England are nearly there

[Yozza]

267-8...

[Shaggy]

One more wicket needed.

[Shaggy]

All over!

[Yozza]

ENGLAND WIN BY 191 RUNS...

SA 274 all out