4:48 The best of the action from day three of the second Test between South Africa and England at Newlands in Cape Town
Atherton felt that Crawley – who was called up for his second Test cap after Rory Burns injured his ankle playing football – will have learned a great deal from that knock.
He said: “There are two aspects to batting and technique is one, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. The other aspect is what you’d call game management and I thought it was a lesson for Zak Crawley.
“He played a nice tempo, some nice shots and he nearly got through Rabada’s opening spell – he had two balls left of his sixth over.
“In that position I’d have been thinking ‘just get through these two balls and you’ve seen the back of Rabada’, but he played a loose shot and Rabada had another over.
“So there’s both the technical side of it and game management and, although it wasn’t a long innings, he’d probably have learned a fair bit about Test cricket there.”
Despite losing both Root and nightwatchman Dom Bess in the closing stages, England avoided the kind of batting collapse that has blighted their recent Test performances and reached 218-4 at stumps.
They will go into the fourth day as favourites to win the match and level the series at 1-1, with Atherton adding: “It was just a day of basic competence from England and that was good to see.
“They had a precious first-innings lead, when you might not have expected it, and it would have been criminal for the batsmen to have blown that because for the first time in the series, they had a chance to bat under less pressure.”
Watch day four of the second Test between South Africa and England from 8am, Monday on Sky Sports Cricket.
Sourse: skysports.com
