Eng. v. SA. - 5th. Test

[Sultan of spin]

What a turn around this match has taken since SA's dominant first innings. Another top knock from Flintoff has put England in a great position to square the series and give Alec Stewart a winning send off.
What a fairytale it would be if Stewart was able to hit the winning runs but I'm getting a long way ahead of myself there cos we all know that England have a habbit of throwing great chances like this one away

[I@n S]

WOW you're a shane Warne fan and have something good to say about England!! Whats the world coming 2? LOL
Tressy must have batted very well to get his highest score (think its his hightest)

[Donny]

In the third over today, Bicknell dismissed Boucher and Hall in 2 deliveries, almost certainly setting up the win for England.

When Harmison got Pollock (43) 5 overs later, the England players went ballistic.

Harmison just dismissed Ntini to finish with 4/33. Bicknell took 4/84.

England require 110 to win.

[HAL]

That was a long time ago.

[Donny]

A good start by the England openers.

At lunch, they are 0/47 with Trescothick on 26 and Vaughan, 13.

[HAL]

Do you have any conditions I should know about?

[Donny]

Vaughan went straight after lunch for 13 but since then, Trescothick and Butcher have whacked a run-a-ball 50 partnership.

Trescothick has had a wonderful return to form with 219 and 69 n.o. and will no doubt be named Man of the Match although England can thank Andrew Flintoff for his wonderful knock of 95. He kept hitting when an easy century beckoned.

The Trescothick/Butcher partnership was 63 from 60 balls.

The series was drawn, 2-2.

[Donny]

England v South Africa, 5th Test, The Oval, Day 5

England square series with nine-wicket win
The Wisden Bulletin by Martin Williamson - September 8, 2003

For a few hours it was possible to suspend belief and fantasise that all was right out there, that England were on top of the world, and that the football season has been forgotten. A packed fifth-day crowd crammed into The Oval to see England blow away the South African tail inside an hour and then knocked off the 110 runs needed to win the match - and square the series - 41 minutes into the afternoon. The spectators, in a party mood from the fourth over of the day when Martin Bicknell struck twice in as many balls to dissipate South Africa's hopes of mounting a rearguard, celebrated as if the Ashes had been regained.

The hard work was done early on when England took the last four South African wickets to leave themselves plenty of time to chase a small target. The heroes were Bicknell, who was written off by some after the first day, and Stephen Harmison, who shared eight wickets in the innings, and all four on final day. Bicknell prised open the door in the fourth over with the wickets of Mark Boucher and Andrew Hall with successive balls. Bicknell toyed with Boucher, bowling him two inswingers and then the outswinger which Boucher was drawn into playing, and Alec Stewart held the thinnest of inside-edges. Boucher made 25 (193 for 7). The next delivery was one of Bicknell's worst, almost a long-hop, but a slightly surprised Andrew Hall fended it away with hard hands and it dollied to Ed Smith at short midwicket (193 for .

Those two quick strikes forced Shaun Pollock onto the attack. He launched into Bicknell, smacking him back over his head and then carving him twice to the third-man boundary for three fours. But in the next over he tried to steer a short, wide one from Harmison to third man, but it flew straight to Graham Thorpe at backward point instead (215 for 9). Pollock had made 43, South Africa's lead was still under 100, and the crowd was in raptures.

Paul Adams went for broke, cracking the tiring Bicknell for three fours to take South Africa's lead past 100, but Harmison ended the innings with a brute of a ball which climbed on Makhaya Ntini, and Smith leapt to hold a diving, one-handed catch at short leg. Ntini had scored 1. Fifty-five minutes after he had led England onto the field to thunderous applause, Alec Stewart led them off it to an even greater reception.

As South Africa struggled to raise themselves one last time to save a series they appeared to have in the bag long ago, they needed the luck to go their way. It didn't. In the second over Ntini produced a peach with turned Trescothick square, found the edge, and flew between second and third slip where Hall completed a wretched morning by spilling a waist-high chance. Heads visibly dropped as those flickering hopes of a dramatic finale disappeared.

England had been largely cautious before lunch, but some looming, darkening clouds injected more urgency afterwards. Michael Vaughan fell straight after the re-start, but Butcher and Trescothick gorged themselves on some weary bowling, unleashing a string of boundaries to the delight of the crowd.

The only thing that would have completed the fairytale end to the summer would have been for Stewart to have hit the winning runs. As it was, he had to be content with cheers every time the big screen showed him sitting on the players' balcony. It was more fitting, perhaps, that the winning runs were hit by Trescothick, a man who is key to the future of the England team and one whose 288 runs were instrumental in this success.

Man of the Match Marcus Trescothick
England Man of the Series Andrew Flintoff
South Africa Man of the Series Graeme Smith

[JLC]

Great effort by England

Why was Hussain out of the team ??

Vaughan
Trescothick
Butcher
Hussain
Thorpe
Flintoff

Starting to look like a more solid batting line up

jlc

[Donny]

Hussain was injured, m8. He broke a toe in the 4th. Test.

Yes, Trescothick, Vaughan, Butcher, Thorpe, Hussain and Flintoff LOOKS a solid batting line up.

Bowling is their problem. Although the attack did the job admirably in the second innings of this Test, Bicknell is a stop gap selection and if Giles is their #1 spinner, they have a big problem.

The top spinners in County cricket are overseas bowlers and talk of Croft going to Bangladesh as the second spinner to Giles indicates their plight.

[I@n S]

England should've won the hole series.. Tressy was stupid in going off for bad light when hes smashing SA all over the the park in that game. Going off then coming back on later screwed his batting form for that match..
The 5th test win should've been to win the series

[Sultan of spin]

SA are clearly the second best test nation in the world so it is a top effort by England to draw the series. They recovered from Smith's onslaught in the early test andwere the better side in the second half of the series. The batting looks very solid and I don;t think it would be an exageration to say it is a world class batting line up. But the bowling and now the wicketkeeping problem with give the selectors nightmare's If Croft was brought back that wouldjust be an embarassment.

Anyway it was a fitting send off for Alec Stewart after such a wonderful career.

[Donny]

England v South Africa, 5th Test, The Oval
From dunces to diamond geezers
The Paper Round by Freddie Auld - September 9, 2003

After writing England's, and Michael Vaughan's, summer obituaries at the end of the first day at The Oval, the English newspapers were forced to change their tune after England's historic win against South Africa yesterday.

Mike Walters, in The Mirror, summed up the buoyant mood of the English public and players, describing the win as sensational and swashbuckling. He gushed: "In a summer of more twists than the London Underground map, Michael Vaughan's men went from dunces to diamond geezers in the space of five days." And he added that Vaughan, who joined in a playful game of football with a space-hopper on the outfield, was lucky that "five of his foot-soldiers ensured the final npower Test will go down in the pantheon of their greatest wins".

And those five foot-soldiers - Marcus Trescothick, Graham Thorpe, Andrew Flintoff, Stephen Harmison and Martin Bicknell - all received accolades in varying degrees. Christopher Martin-Jenkins, in The Times, more soberly pointed out that those individuals had "played to their potential" and that the team performed "as a whole with a determination and professionalism that did them all proud".

The Sun splashed a photo of Alec Stewart hoisted on his team-mates' shoulders, with the corny headline "We're Oval the moon". John Etheridge described the win as staggering and mind-boggling, and insisted that this victory "will rank alongside anything Stewart experienced in his time at the top".

But while most eyes were on the departing Stewart, Vaughan didn't escape the column inches. Angus Fraser, in The Independent, wrote that even though Vaughan has had only four matches in charge of England, "He will have been through a far greater range of emotions than Steve Waugh in the four years he has led the world champions."

And although Fraser said that Vaughan can feel proud after coming through his "biggest test", Oliver Holt in The Mirror noticed a note of reservation in Vaughan's manner. "Quite why Michael Vaughan looked as if he'd just been told his mum had found a stack of porn mags concealed under his bed is a more complex issue," Holt said. "Vaughan had just led his team to one of England's most remarkable victories to square a series that seemed on the first day to have slipped into their opponents' hands. But the England skipper appeared somewhere on the sheepish side of morose after this nine-wicket thriller of a win. Drained by the relief flooding out of him. Just glad it was all over."

Well, you can't blame him after leading England in a season which has been consistently inconsistent, according to Simon Barnes in The Times: "One minute we are watching a very decent side, the next we are watching a bunch of losers," Barnes pointed out, adding that "It is the sort of thing that unsettles a chap." He highlighted Trescothick as an example. "One day Marcus Trescothick is a spent force, the next he is the most imperious batsman in world cricket. Certainly, pressure inspired Trescothick. He moved from circumspection to certainty and from certainty to majesty. He made nearly 300 runs in the match for once out: not bad for a man who was all washed up." And Barnes concluded: "But if England are consistent only in their inconsistency, then we must come to terms with the fact that, in a perverse way, inconsistency is their strength."

But what of South Africa? They fly home this evening knowing that they ought to have won the series after dominating the first two matches. And we've seen it all before. While Michael Owen-Smith told us in The Mercury that Graeme Smith rejected charges that his team had yet to get rid of the label of being chokers, the Cape Argus ran a headline: "Wanted: Spin and swing."

Owen-Smith and the Daily Mail's Mike Dickson then picked out where South Africa, despite an encouraging tour, still fall short. Smith may have become "the darling of the English cricketing media for his availability, his transparency, his honesty and his humility," they said, but his team are short of a strike bowler and their spin bowling remains the biggest single concern: "Paul Adams had an up-and-down tour on pitches that did not always suit him, while Robin Peterson is early in the learning curve."

And then there is also the worry of replacing Gary Kirsten. They argued that "Kirsten's decision to play on has at least allowed Jacques Rudolph more time to settle," and that "Rudolph has had a disappointing series, but he has shown enough glimpses to suggest that he is a player of quality."

While South Africa take those concerns on with them to Pakistan, the England selectors have already been in discussions for the winter tours. As CMJ pointed out, "There has been, in the end, a strong contrast between England's success with a young team under Vaughan in the one-day internationals in the middle of the season and the manner in which the experience of Thorpe and Bicknell, both 34, and Nasser Hussain, 35, helped them to draw this series with the second-best Test team in the world."

However, he suggested that Bicknell is unlikely to join "the small band of seam bowlers on the slow pitches of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka before Christmas, even less so on the slightly faster ones of the Caribbean in March." And David Llewellyn in The Independent concluded: "It would appear that Harmison has the pace Bicknell lacks and that Bicknell has the consistency Harmison is missing. Old heads on young shoulders springs to mind. The selectors' job gets no easier."