England v South Africa, 1st Test, Lord’s, 3rd day

Not sure about “a zillion comments” but i’ll try and leave one for you…

Why has Foster not come back into the equation. He looks a good package to me as a good keeper who can hold a bat.

I really do hope we don’t bring Freddie back as 1 of 4 bowlers. It’s negative and won’t have the variation to beat the Aussies.

Collingwood needs to be kicked out, unlucky or not, and bat Flintoff at 6. The runs are starting to come and with Broad at 8 we’ve got plenty of depth. It’s not as though Collingwood has been making runs is it so what do we lose.

Flintoff is England’s best bowler by a country mile and we need to keep the workload off him, playing him in a 4 man attack is not going to do that.

Was at the cricket today. Meh.

Yes, England bowled well and SA batted poorly, with the exception of Prince. Jacques Kallis, Graeme Smith and AB de Villiers needed smacks round their heads for wasting their wickets. All three of them should have had easy centuries on what was pretty clearly a batting track early on.

England were good. They weren’t exceptional or electrifying. What WAS very, very clear is that Mickey Arthur should have made blimmin’ sure that his team – ESPECIALLY the bowlers – got a LOT of intense TEST cricket practice on English pitches before last Thursday, not poncey net bowling/batting. They should have been here AGES ago – even just individual players doing a county season.

Honestly, England are cleaning the clock of a rusty team, not beating SA at their best. It doesn’t mean a great deal.

I have tickets for the third day at the Oval. I hope to see the SA team I’ve come to expect and some far better cricket than what I saw today.

And as for Flintoff, he was out for 2. The selectors need to shut up about him until he returns to his 2005 form.

Ixx