Probably not noticed with Franny Benali's award but the great Gordon Greenidge has been awarded the KCMG for services to cricket and to the development of sport. Hero of mine.
Just gone to the BBC website and find NZ were slaughtered yet again by Australia. Very disappointing from a team that recently beat England. Having said that, not many teams go to Australia go there and come anywhere near matching the Aussies, let alone beating them, save India last winter.
Will SA now prepare dead wickets to ensure they win the series a la NZ? It would negate the pace of Archer and the stroke makers that England have.
Pope for Bairstow will obviously happen for the second test (health permitting). But beyond that, it's difficult to see what else we can do. I do think it's right to question Buttler's position, but I do have an immense about of sympathy for him. He's spent his career in and out of the test team - and given that it's basically the only red ball cricket that he plays, that makes it very difficult to nail his place down. It's only really at the moment that he's getting a decent run of red ball games, and unfortunately for him it's coming when he's batting at 7, with guys above him who get out too early, and guys below him at 9, 10 and 11 who just get brushed straight away every time. Therefore he can neither play the Gilchrist role of adding the icing, cherry and glitter to an already solid score, nor the Haddin role of batting with the tail to dig his side out of a hole and get them up to a decent score.
I don't know how Naby Keita got injured in the warm-up tonight, but I'm guessing it wasn't from breaking his arm whilst trying to fend off a Virgil short ball.
Just finished off SA's 1st innings. Ben Stokes now has new record of most catches (five) in an innings, by someone other than the wicketkeeper. We've got a bit of a lead (about 40 runs?), so the match is now a one innings game (just about)
I'd suggest that on this wicket, and with two brittle batting line-ups, a first innings lead of 46 is not to be sniffed at. If we were to make, say, 230, then the difference between SA chasing 230 or 275 could be quite big.
If England had prepared themselves properly in the first place, they might not have lost that first test.