Team of the day: England
Player of the day: Ian Bell
As far as England cricket goes, it doesn't get much better than today. I have given the prestigious Deep Mid-Wicket player of the day award to Ian Bell, but it could just have easily have been given to Stuart Broad or Graeme Swann.
My closing words in yesterday's post were "We could really do with building a good lead tomorrow morning and bowling South Africa out without having to bat again if we want to win the game." And today, we did exactly that.
Adding to his overnight score of 55, Ian Bell finally went after making an outstanding 141 - a score he absolutely needed in what was his do or die test and what was rightly described by Dale Steyn as “career-saving”.We eventually declared at the perfect time on 575-9, 232 ahead.While the batting was impressive, the bowling was equally as good.
We had an Ashes-esque batting performance when we held on in the last test at Centurion, and another Ashes-esque performance came from Stuart Broad today, remnant of when he turned the game on its head with a five wicket haul on the way to England winning the prestigious urn at the Oval. He didn't take 5 wickets today - he managed 3, but he certainly turned the game on its head, finding the perfect line and length and a bit of 'nip' in the sensational South African collapse to 76-6.
Graeme Swann certainly pulled his weight as well - he also took 3 wickets as his brilliant tour continues.
