England wins cricket series in South Africa

The steady decline over that time of the South Africans has been acknowledged by their new captain, AB de Villiers.

To complete a singular triumph for captain Alastair Cook he also made his first batting contribution of the series with 43 (70 balls, 7 fours).

“I was never thinking of leaving Test cricket at all”.

The South Africans have had a vice-like grip on the No 1 spot since 2014, which they had briefly relinquished to the resurgent Australians earlier in the same year.

With South Africa rebuilding, the No. 1 test ranking is up for grabs.

The Proteas’ Dale Steyn, who missed the encounter at the Wanderers with a shoulder injury, was also overtaken by the Englishman. “Our attitude in thinking what we can do better, rather than thinking we are already there”. “We’re still up there in the rankings and all that, but that means absolutely nothing”.

“They are a good unit – they work well, have good management and are encouraged to express themselves and this springboard is just what they wanted to believe they can win away”.

“The youngsters will learn a lot”. Not long ago, I was that youngster in the team going through ups and downs at test level. It’s important to survive at the moment… and to not give up.

Stuart Broad produced another fine spell of fast bowling against South Africa.

There was no let-up for the home side when Broad was rested, Steven Finn removing Dane Vilas (8) thanks to another sensational one-handed catch by Taylor diving to his right. I guess when momentum is on your side, things tend to happen that way. “Credit to them for creating that kind of pressure”, de Villiers said of England’s performance.

The next milestone for Broad will be 350 wickets, which he is now just 20 off and given Broad’s schedule in test matches after this series, he’s likely to do it against Pakistan later in the English summer, following the upcoming series against Sri Lanka.

“It probably doesn’t quite match up to Trent Bridge – that was something else”. So incisive was Broad yesterday, even a 400-plus wicket taker like James Anderson got lost in his shadow. 400-plus on this wicket is very tough to play against.

“The players we have are not really the issue, there’s still something to work with there”, he said.

South Africa bowled out England for 323 in the morning session for a slender first-innings deficit of 10 runs, but were no match for the bounce and movement of a rampant Broad.

Cook said: “It’s been a really good six weeks. They asked a lot of questions”.

“So we had a chat with the coaches and the bowling group before we went out in the second innings and we talked about bringing the batsmen forward a lot more, using the bouncer of course, but trying to get the edges from a fuller length”.