As much as everyone is cherishing the advent of athletes in London for the Olympics, but the tension of the South African cricket team, can’t go unobserved. The eagerly awaited series between the world number one and two is finally indoors. Beside pride, the top spot is at stake here and the English on home soil won’t go down without a fight, will the Proteas fade out?
Definitely the English on home soil have an edge, no doubt about that. They’ve been on pole position for a long time now, so is SA the team to knock them off? When Graeme Smith retired as ODI captain, he said his mission was to lead SA to the World number one spot, has that time arrived? The next 15 days of trilling test cricket as from tomorrow will certainly put us off our melancholy.
The swiftly resignation of Mark Boucher left SA with nuisance on who’ll keep the wickets at the Oval, certainly AB de Villiers is ready to keep the wickets. Consequently Tami Tsolekile was called up but between him and AB, who will be trusted? I’ll go for Tsolekile as he is a specialist compared to AB and his homicide stunning fielding skills behind the sticks, we might live to regret that!
England has been in sublime form for some time now, proved it when they crashed Australia 4-0 in their recent ODI series. South Africans will be hoping that they’re due to fail and maybe just maybe against Smith boys. But with high flying captain Cook, Bell Andrew, Swann etc. It promises to be an intriguing contest. Who’ll prevail?
What makes the England tour even more fascinating is that about half of their team is made up of South African born with Kevin and Troth being the bold ones. And the rivalry between Kevin and our skipper Smith, absolutely adds up some desired spices’ but history has shown that Smith do get what he feels belong to his team against South African English, Pieterson.
Set those reminders, 12:00 Thursday, the Oval pitch in London will be fully packed with world number one bowler Steyn and the likes of Philander, Mokel Brod, Anderson and Graeme Swann, who creamed our batsmen in Durban in their last tour of SA, who’ll forget? Surely not SA. Let’s assembly behind our boys on their expedition to be number one in test cricket again. Good lucky boys!
Till next time…
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By Fanele Mbuyazi (GoXtra News Sport Columnist) leave your comments for me below the comment box. Would really love to hear your opinions...
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