South African Win At Jo'burg confirmed!

Well if the first three tests between South Africa and England are taken into consideration, it would be wrong to tell or precisely speaking predict the result of the fourth test at Johannesburg no matter what the bats and balls have had to say on the first two days of play. Not for the first time are the South Africans holding an upper hand in the ongoing test series which is needless to be said. Anyone who says that South Africa will win the series will have to kick himself at the end of the day for this is something that the Proteas are facing since the start of the test tournament.

But, after the end of the third day's play, one has to give South Africa their due in the series whatsoever. If people are still keeping their fingers crossed, they would be left with no other option but to stop the prediction game and just press the red button on their TV remote control. However, the ghosts were seen haunting the Proteas by threatening to play a spoilsport yet again when bad light had its say for almost 20 minutes, following which things returned to normalcy. However, there was nothing to panic for the Proteas for, there were still two more days to go after this.

At the end of the day's play, South Africa had declared with 423 runs on the board with the loss of 7 wickets, 5 more than what they had lost on the second day's play which is not the million dollar question at the moment. However, the moment the South African captain Greame Smith declared at the aforementioned score, doubts would have begun to raise in Smith's favor for, declaring with a lead of just above 200 runs can make a fool out of oneself no matter whose decision it was to declare. Or was Smith undoing the mistake that he did in the first and the third tests where he declared with a mammoth total?

Smith imposed a target of 364 runs and 466 runs in the first and third tests respectively, which the English batsmen gave up to chase and just concentrated on how to save the test by seeing to that it ends up in a draw which they successfully did. Now, it looks like a comparatively better decision by Smith when, there is still 2 more days to go and added to that is that a session on the day's play is yet to finish. And that session did pay for, South Africa did manage to grab three quick English wickets to find England reeling at 48-3 with 3 of their top batsmen back in the pavilion. Incase things don't go as anticipated, there would be yet another innings for South Africa to bat and set things right.

Until yesterday, there was no fear of South Africa losing. But, after the third day's play well in front, a South African win can never be ruled out unless there is heavy rain until the end of the scheduled fifth day.