Dean Elgar goes into tea on 54, as he steered the Proteas to 96-2 on day two against England at Lord’s, writes TOM SIZELAND.
Joe Root impressed with the bat on his captaincy debut, now it’s Dean Elgar’s turn. It was a classic display from Elgar, with his nuggety technique seeing off the pacemen, before tucking into the spinners.
The only problem is that he’s starting to lose partners around him. It’s going to take a huge effort from the middle-order to match what was a solid effort from Moeen Ali and the tail in the morning session on day two.
Going into the day on 357-5, it was a good fightback from the visitors, as Morne Morkel was quick to see off Root, who could only add six to his overnight total, with Liam Dawson falling two balls later.
Moeen and Stuart Broad, however, played their part in allowing England to score at eight an over in the morning as they scored 87 and 57 respectively. Morkel finished with figures of 4-115, but by the time he’d taken the final wicket of James Anderson for 12, England had amassed 458.
Elgar and Heino Kuhn did well to see off the last four overs before lunch, but Broad was quick to strike after the break. Kuhn has been in the form of his life recently, with recent scores of 200*, 105 and 85*, but it counts for nothing when you put on Test whites. Broad got the ball to move off the seam ever so slightly, which forced the edge behind for Kuhn to walk back for one.
Elgar and Hashim Amla went along pretty comfortably from there. They built up a 72-run stand as Elgar dispelled any concerns of stepping up to the task with the skippers’ armband, with a half-century off 90 balls.
Then, against the run of play with Amla seemingly cruising along, a Moeen Ali delivery kept low, which turned enough to deceive him. There was no point in wasting a review, heading back to the pavilion for 29 off 40 balls.
There were only two scoring shots from the 23 balls JP Duminy faced, but they were both well-struck boundaries as he went into the break on eight, with his captain looking to continue the fight with the side on 96-2.
Photo: Gareth Copley/Getty Images
