England looks to slaughter Proteas
The Proteas can expect the same ‘ruthless’ attitude from England in the fourth and final Test, touring captain Alastair Cook said.
|||The Proteas can expect the same ‘ruthless’ attitude from England in the fourth and final Test match at SuperSport Park from Friday as the touring captain Alastair Cook looks to add another victory to their 2-0 series rout.
The English were unyielding in their seven-wicket series-clinching performance over South Africa at the Wanderers on the third day of the third Test over the weekend.
Although the last Test was billed as a dead rubber, Cook believed his side had every reason to keep up the intensity for a rare 3-0 victory over the home side.
“I thought we were very ruthless in that last game, we sniffed and opportunity and we powered through as a team obviously led brilliantly by Stuart (Broad),” Cook said.
“We have a lot to play for, just as much personally for players who haven’t scored the amount of runs or taking the amounts of wickets they’d like there is a lot to play for.”
Proteas captain AB de Villiers praised England for their dominant performance throughout the series but believed his side could still capitlise on some of the tourists’ frailties.
“There is no hiding from the fact that they seem to know what they are doing, they seem to understand their roles really well, but there is also no doubt in my mind there are weaknesses there,” De Villiers said.
“We’ve exposed some of them over the last couple of weeks but not enough and not for long enough periods of time.”
De Villiers said the English batting lineup in particular demonstrated weaknesses during the series which he hoped the team could expose in the last Test.
“The batting are not 100 percent best in the world material, there are a couple of areas we can expose if we have a good start with the ball in hand, if we are nice and solid, build up the dot balls, a bit of patience, I believe we can find a few cracks in the batting lineup,” he said.
“Their bowling lineup has a lot of experience but some of the guys have lost a bit of pace over the years but they are very smart and very skilled so there is also another angle to counter but they are not unbeatable.”
Cook conceded the English batting, with the exception of a few players, were not up to scratch with the Test offering the ideal opportunity for some batsmen to regain form.
“In this series a lot of runs have been scored by Joe (Root), Ben (Stokes) and Jonny Bairstow batting at four, six and seven scoring the majority of our runs,” Cook said.
“It is great for those guys, obviously the other guys haven’t quite contributed and myself included, so we have that opportunity in this game to do it.”
Independent Media