I hate to say I told you so, but…
Okay, so I don’t hate it that much. It’s probably not the most becoming headline for a blog post, but if you look at this blog post, I pretty much spelled out what would happen if England didn’t move Pietersen to five. They didn’t listen. Pietersen got out for seven. England were 180-all out before the end of the first day. Coincidence? No, I don’t think so.
You see, the yeoman-like efforts of Alastair Cook, Ian Bell and especially Paul Collingwood have been papering over the San Andreas Fault-like cracks in the England batting lineup. Pietersen is in a pretty major slump and that seems to have affected Trott. By leaving the lineup largely unchanged, Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower assured England supporters that once again Bell and Collingwood would have to put together a whale of a partnership to bring England a respectable score. This time, they didn’t get a whale, they got a dolphin–and now, sorry Charlie, England are looking like rotten tuna.
The optimists will say there’s a long way to go in this test match, but I don’t really see this side defying the inevitable yet another time. Dale Steyn appears to be out for blood, literally. The Proteas are 29/0 at the end of the first day, and unless England bowls a fantastic spell in the morning, it’s going to be a full day in the field and an early deficit.
Here are the first day’s highlights (thanks to cricfire.com, my personal favorite site to watch cricket):
The Sticky Wicket Blog 