The return of Jimmy Anderson will help to keep the pressure on South Africa in Cape Town – but England should not get too far ahead of themselves. So here’s what Alastair Cook needs to do to help his team maintain the momentum going into the second Test.
Bring back Jimmy Anderson
Selecting your best fast bowler when he’s fit might not seem like the most startling or “out there” piece of advice, but there would certainly be a temptation to stick with a winning side for the second Test in Cape Town.
Chris Woakes didn’t do a great deal wrong, certainly seeming to have added a yard or two of pace since his last Test appearance and his batting at No9 is certainly a comforting piece of insurance, but if Anderson is fit and ready, he must play.
This is a South African team who look like they’re not so much declining but plummeting from the No1 spot in the Test rankings, so England should apply boot to throat and go for a whitewash.
Not get too carried away
That said, there is a temptation, looking at an excellent all-round performance and the burgeoning mess that is the South African team, to get a little giddy and think a 4-0 win is inevitable. It’s also well to remember that this is still an England team in progress with a fair amount of inexperience, three of the top six having played 15 Tests between them.
England won six Tests in 2015 but also lost six, the most times they have been defeated in a calendar year since 2001, and only won consecutive games once.
Durban saw a fine result without having to rely on key men, as happened against Pakistan, but the next step is to develop some consistency.
Try to get Alex Hales to relax
When England picked Alex Hales (top right) to be their dasher at the top of the order, it looked like an “in at the deep end” selection, giving the Nottinghamshire man his Test debut against Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel et al.
Now, with Steyn surely out of the Newlands match, it looks like a slightly more manageable introduction, but only if he plays like he can.
Hales looked (understandably) nervous in his two knocks in Durban, not playing strokes with the freedom that we know he can, but if England can work out a way to relax him then he could offer the sort of quick runs at the top of the order they’re looking for. The current top three of Cook, Hales and Compton has a pleasing balance to it in theory, but that’s not much use unless it works in practice.
Convert more starts
England, particularly Joe Root, Nick Compton and James Taylor, batted well in Durban, but even those three will perhaps be frustrated that they didn’t capitalise on good starts to make one of Graham Gooch’s “daddy hundreds”. Or, indeed, a hundred at all.
This isn’t to say that England batted poorly, far from it, but in a second innings when Steyn was restricted to just 23 deliveries and a shade more than 20 overs were entrusted to assorted trundlers and part-timers, a few batsmen might be disappointed they didn’t pile on the runs. Should Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis rediscover their form, England will need their top men to push on.
Tighten things up in the field
It seems like quite a long time ago when there was an amount of hand-wringing about some missed chances in the field for England, but on day one a few chances were missed, so much so that Stuart Broad was moved to comment on it after play.
“We have left a couple of wickets out there,” he said. “We are trying to work on taking all our chances, not having to take 25 wickets in a Test.” That improved as the match progressed, Jonny Bairstow’s tough but makable stumping aside, but if England really are to make a mark on this series, they will have to be completely ruthless.
Jimmy Anderson
