England Deceived!!!

The way England played their first innings of the fourth test match against South Africa at Johannesburg was as though the English players had taken a draw to be granted like it happened in the earlier tests against the Proteas. One has to just imagine as to how foolish one can get when they are found expecting a fortune to happen, when it is a known fact that fortune has to come by its own in case of lack of hard work and fortune is hunted down by hard working people. How could the English players expect South Africa to take just 9 wickets just because it happened on two earlier occasions?

If one can take trouble to go through the scorecard of England's batting, it would be clear that England had no plans to even sweat it out at the stadium. It is not a big task to bowl out some team like Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and even the West Indies (to a greater extent) on day one itself. But, if someone like England have lost all their 10 wickets on a single day and that too on two successive occasions, their test status needs to be questioned whatsoever. On the first day's play, England were all out for 180, that was followed with South Africa putting 29 runs for no loss of wickets.

Then on the fourth day, even before half of the scheduled time had elapsed, England lost 7 wickets, earlier to which England had lost 3 wickets at the end of the third day's play itself. With England winning the fourth test at Johannesburg or even a draw completely being out of question, at least, England could have avoided an innings defeat by scoring atleast 254 runs required for South Africa to bat again. But, England ended up their second innings putting up a score less than what they could in their first innings when they lost all their 10 wickets for 169.

The third and the first tests that ended in draws was not only a caution for the South African players but also for the English players. Finally, England who took the caution for granted had to pay the price for their half minded approach. Whatever be the result of the Johannesburg test, there was no chance of England losing the series and may be that England were more the less contended with that. Who cares when a loss can only see the trophy being shared! If South Africa had Kallis, Smith and Steyn, England had Peitersen and Broad an co..who could have given it back to the Proteas which didn't.

Finally, though no one expected England to win, or though there can be at the most one winner, both the teams are expected to put up a tough fight which can make the spectators keep their fingers crossed. But, England relied on things which were beyond their control and may be that home sick England just wanted to leave South Africa ASAP.