Cricket journalists love a day like today.
They get all sweated up talking about how this is a proper day of cricket.
A typical sentence will be, “What an attritional, gritty, gruelling, testing, resolute arm wrestle of a contest, I remember a day like this….”
Not that they were wrong, those adjectives are correct. It was all of them, as are most days when Kallis makes runs.
Not that it was his fault, Kallis went slightly quicker than he usually does, it was just that no one else batted even that fast.
Amla and Prince dug themselves in.
AB looked a bit tentative.
And JP Duminy spent most of his day not scoring of the shorter ball.
South Africa were batting like a team really worried that their new four man attack, replete with new boy Friedel de Wet (check out the hair cut) was not quite as good as their attack of earlier this year.
England put South Africa in; not with any intent it seemed, but just to spice things up a little like a married coupe doing it with the lights on.
Botham yelled at Broad, Onions had no luck, Anderson was average and Collingwood wasn’t the worst medium pacer to bowl.
They were saved by Swann. Kallis decided that Swann was going to go the way of Bryce McGain, and for a couple of overs it looked possible, but Swann came back strong and was the only bowler who looked capable of taking a bag of wickets.
As all spinners do on the first day of a test when their captain have sent the opposition in.
South Africa’s treacle run rate will keep England interested, but they will need to score a lot more runs to give this make shift bowling unit a chance.
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