England v South Africa, 1st Test, Lord's, 17-21 August, 2022

Impressive bowling line-up for the Siths.

As LW says, with Rabada and Nortje above 90 kph, and Ngidi and Jansen moving the ball alarmingly, the Poms really have their hands full with the willow.

Hopefully will be the same in reverse, could be a very low-scoring series unless they play on absolute roads.

Maybe SA’s recent success hasn’t been a fluke, their batting looks paper thin but the way you win Tests is by bowling sides out twice.

Bowled out for 165… need to keep them to not much over 200 to stay in the game. Not much room for manoeuvre.

Quickly getting away from us already.

Another 100 runs would be very handy. England’s bowling suddenly looks very vulnerable on anything other than a seaming greentop.

Another 100 and they probably win by an innings. Any bowling attack is vulnerable when you only give them 160 to defend.

England might have limited the damage only for the fast 7th wkt stand between Jansen and The Prince of Spinners.

At 6-210 SAf could have expired with only a smallish lead but the tail had other idea.

I thought with 4 quicks and a spinner, The Sith might have a long tail but no. I didn't realize Jansen was on allrounder.

England need Root and Bairstow to go big in I2 or they are in for a hiding.

skully wrote:England need Root and Bairstow to go big in I2 they are in for a hiding.

I’m hopeful.

The Sith won't get anywhere near the movement that they did on Day 1, but the outright quality of the pace attack will be a challenge for England.

I guess we're about to find out if Bazball works in the third innings.

We needed to enforce the follow-on so we could bat last… unfortunately we failed to bowl them out for -35 as required.

Jansen looks a good prospect at 22 - six foot seven left-armer who can swing the ball and he's handy with the bat too.

Yarps bowled out for 326. Now, we could scratch around for a day or so just to make them bat again for a trivial target, or go down all guns blazing, either getting back into it or losing by an innings. I know which approach my money’s on…

Bazball - knock off the deficit before lunch!

Set them 200 and it’s game on.

Crawley gone cheaply again. He’s averaging barely 20 without that double… I’m all for giving players a bit of time, but surely this is starting to be unfair on other candidates for a place?

2 very poor shots to the spinner. That's just lazy cricket.

Fantastic stat from Dickinfo. Zak Crawley is one of only 3 male players (out of 3093 players) in the history of Test Cricket to have a top score that is more than 10 times his average. The others are Wasim Akram and Jason Gillespie.

An appalling stat for an alleged top order player.

I repeat, if Neph and Jonny don't go big, this is gonna be a very ugly defeat for Blighty.

If only he could bowl like those two. He’s tall enough, maybe give it a try and he could slot in at 8…

Minus 123 for 2 at lunch. 50-50 on the Yarps having to bat again, I’d say. The bacon and egg brigade won’t be impressed with no action over the weekend, especially given we lost half of day 1 to rain!

Anyway, not sure who’s in the frame for alternative openers. I doubt the current regime would go back to Burns, Sibley or Hameed. Can imagine them taking a flyer from the one-day side, and with Roy hopelessly out of sorts it would probably be Jonny B up there with next cab off the rank Brook finally getting a shot in the middle order.

Broad at the crease and 75 still needed. Just to make them bat again, that is.

Nokia is good to watch. He bowls quite a few north of 150.

Definitely not phoning it in

Broad Bazballing here.

Looks like SA will have to bat again now with the way this pair is hitting out.

Bugger. Was thinking Botham/Dilley for a moment…