214 all out, England lead by 89. Boycott: "What a terrific performance by the England bowlers. They've given their team a match-winning lead, no doubt about that. There's no way back for South Africa." Commentator's curse?
Good old Geoffrey. Lead of 89 should be good enough though. Pitch looked like it was a bit of uneven voice a couple of times and with Moeen taking 4 in first innings he could be a handful in last day. Anything around 300 will win this for England.
Total curse. Sa have struggled so England need 2 or 3 batsmen to really stick in. Cook and root for sure.
England 275-7 at lunch, lead of 364. No declaration yet; TMS think they'll carry on for a bit after lunch.
Bat through the hottest part of the day if we can It's bloody great to be watching a proper test match for once
First time for everything eh Think we've played excellently so far mate, really impressed (although this isn't the South Africa I was expecting on home soil). We still need to sort the openers out but we seem to have decent depth in the batting now and for the bowlers to cope so well without Anderson is surely a good sign
Bairstow half century, England nearly at 300. We've done well by the sounds of it, albeit (as you say) SA have been poorer than expected and we've ridden our luck with dropped catches a bit. Isn't Anderson maybe available for the next test?
We got a bit lucky with Steyn injury, although that has no impact on their batting performance and our bowling in the first innings. Actually quite an exciting team, Hales needs time yet, but Root, Taylor, Stokes, Bairstow/Butler can all score runs and score them quickly as well.
I think he's touch and go but they may well stick with this team as the next one starts on Saturday (which is pretty tight scheduling for tests). As is often the case with a first test it's hard to judge how good we've been vs how bad SA have been. All we can do is beat what's in front of us though #classiccliche Yes, South Africa batted poorly but you can't fault our bowlers. They bowled well and forced errors, Broad has been excellent again and was backed up by the others giving little in the way of "free" runs. Batting we've had a good balance of calm (Compton and Root) and explosive power later on. Loads of time left now so let's finish the job
