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England's missing XI
England are leaving out so many good players today, for one reason or another, that they could give the actual team a run for its money. The only department that looks a bit skimpy is the spin bowling.
1 Jonny Bairstow, 2 Alex Hales, 3 Joe Root, 4 Phil Salt (wkt), 5 Ben Stokes (capt), 6 Liam Livingstone, 7 Chris Woakes, 8 Liam Dawson, 9 Mark Wood, 10 Saqib Mahmood, 11 Reece Topley.
So no Chris Woakes for England, which is a surprise. In fact, no classic right-arm seamer: Buttler has gone with two quicks, two lefties, a leggie and an offie. Bags of variety, but they may miss Woakes as the innings goes on and Archer, who has been bowling only four overs every couple of days, gets tired. “It’s gonna be a long day,” he says, “but I’m ready for it.”
The teams
SA 1 Quinton de Kock (wkt), 2 Temba Bavuma (capt), 3 Aiden Markram, 4 Rassie van der Dussen, 5 Heinrich Klaasen, 6 David Miller, 7 Wayne Parnell, 8 Sisanda Magala, 9 Kagiso Rabada, 10 Anrich Nortje, 11 Tabraiz Shamsie.
England 1 Jason Roy, 2 Ben Duckett, 3 Dawid Malan, 4 Jos Buttler (capt, wkt), 5 Harry Brook, 6 Moeen Ali, 7 Sam Curran, 8 David Willey, 9 Adil Rashid, 10 Jofra Archer, 11 Olly Stone.
England would have bowled anyway
Jos Buttler, who tends to be honest in his mild-mannered way, says he would have chosen to bowl first. “It looks a really good surface, but we fancied a chase.”
Toss: SA win and bat
Temba Bavuma wins the toss and chooses to bat. “Runs on the board,” he says. He doesn’t say: Jofra straight into action.
Preamble: Jofra time!
Hello everyone and welcome to a series that would have taken place, Covid permitting, back in December 2020. But perhaps we’re lucky that it didn’t. For one thing, we would have forgotten all about it by now. And for another, it wouldn’t have been a chance for a thrilling talent to make a long-awaited comeback. After 22 months lost to injury, and 84 England matches missed in all formats, Jofra Archer is back in business.
He has played five games for MI Cape Town in the SA20, taken eight wickets – and, above all, stayed fit. Now he returns to the international team that he spearheaded all the way to a World Cup win when he was an international novice. It’s hard to know who will be more nervous: Archer or the South African batters sent out to face him.
If Jofra wasn’t such a big star, we might be talking about a mouthwatering debut. England are expected to give a first ODI cap to Harry Brook, who spent the Test tour of Pakistan batting like Bradman on speed. Jos Buttler could also hand an ODI recall to Ben Duckett, who was almost as dominant in Pakistan as Brook.
Quiz question: when did these two teams last meet in this format? I had to look up the answer, even though it turned out to be only last July. They played a three-match series in England that finished 1-1. The last game was washed out and the one before was all over in less than half the allotted time, as England scraped 201 in 28.1 overs at Old Trafford and South Africa crumbled to 83 all out in 20.4. The chances of anything like that happening today, in the blazing heat of Bloemfontein, seem on the slim side.
Play starts at 11am (UK time), and I’ll be back soon after 10.35 with news of the toss and the teams.
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