There is no coverage in the UK sadly but judging by day ones play it might not have been a bad thing.......245 for 8 ah nee man with Amla on 118 and JP having made 50 odd........I see AB got run out, which is sinful in a test match and the rest of the bats failed.
Faf continues his bad form, I have a feeling his honeymoon year is over and he has been found out at the highest level.
We need to somehow scrape together 350 runs
Ok
Let me clear up the issue - SA won the toss and decided to bat - the score at the end of day one is 245 for 8.
Petersen failed as opener and so did Smith and Kallis. Amla is still batting at 174 not out. De Villiers ran himself out through losing concentration with 18 runs on the board - the way he was out was the stupidest I have ever seen. Duminy made 38 run before he was caught. The rest all went cheaply - and at this stage Steyn and Amla is batting.
Just before the last over - Steyn hit a huge 6 - but the net ball was caught on the boundary and because the catcher was about to go over the boundary - he through the ball back into the field - not out the result.
Sorry
I should have checked the scores of individuals before writing the above. However, it remains the same insofar as performances were concerned. The batting failures of Petersen, Smith and Kallis was clear - De Villiers made a major flop as well by getting himself run out like he did. Matter of fact De Villiers made no real effort to score runs - he was blocking all the time and ended up scoring 18 runs at a rate of about 1,5 runs per every 6 ball bowled at him. That normally results in a low score and loss of wicket by the batsman in any event.
That was followed by a no show by Du Plessis and Robin Peterson with the bat. From a batting perspective Amla saved the day for the Proteas - with support by Duminy. The rest was poor and the reason given was that they played no test cricket since the English games earlier this year - and Kallis and Smith virtually no cricket at all.
I may be wrong - but I think there are weaknesses in batting in the team and that all of Peterson, Smith and Kallis is on the way out. Du Plessis was never a really good batter despite his heroics in Australia last year.
Saffex
I think there is a problem with Kallis - he plays very little cricket and he flopped in both innings in this test. Is he still up to it - or is he purely playing on reputation. Maybe it is time for him to stop playing international cricket.
Peterson is also a really insecure option as an opening batsman - don't we have any better opener? Then we also have players like Du Plessis - who did well in Australia - but since then has been a serial flop. We certainly have better batsmen in players like Miller, Rilee Rossouw and Quin ton de Kock - why stick with the serial flops?
