Great win......what a performance this morning........shame about losing 3 wickets at the death, a 10 wicket win sounds so much better than a 7 wicket win, but that's just me being picky
Incredible days cricket. Series win on a difficult pitch and against the No.1 test nation. Brilliant, well done Captain Cook & co.
Great win, excellent performance especially by Broad. Cook and Hales look short of confidence with the bat though.
Superb performance by England, a well-deserved series win and really should have been 3-0 after we let them off the hook in the 2nd Test. We now have an attack that is shaping up as the best in World cricket, we only lack a World-class spinner. We still can't solve the riddle of a reliable partner to open with Cook. Compton is an opener but not 'explosive' enough to compliment Cook, that's why Hales is playing but he's not quite a test-class. Fortunately, South Africa are so outclassed in this series we have got away with this weakness. Things are looking good for the summer...
It would have been interesting to have seen SA with Steyn and Philander fit, but I don't think their batting is robust enough at the moment.
Good point Stan, Philander is the 'metronome', naggingly accurate in tying batsmen down whilst Steyn and Morkel are the big-guns who work them over. It's been the best attack in World cricket for several years and, if fit, may have been enough for SA to have run us very close. As you say, the newer batsmen don't yet have the quality and since Smith retired as Captain they just seem to have lost their edge...
It's great to see that Stuart Broad has moved up to No 1 in the world bowler rankings. The first English bowler to do so in over 10 years. Steve Harmison being the last player to achieve this in 2004. http://www.ecb.co.uk/news/articles/broad-top-world
I'm struggling to think of five better all rounders in world cricket than Ben Stokes at the moment, though of course this is all stats driven. Also surprised that Anderson has never been world number one bowler, and indeed only Harminson and Botham have achieved that in the last 30 years for England. Well done Broady. Get your batting back to where it was before you took that nasty blow to the head and you'll be up there in the all rounder list too.
The effectiveness of Broad, Anderson and Finn are largely determined by the conditions and/or pitch. Give them a flat Indian, Sri Lankan track or indeed like those we saw in the UAE and they struggle to take wickets, that is why I believe the emphasis should be on bringing through a top class spinner to fill the void left by Swann.
