3rd ODI England v South Africa at Headingley

Neil Whitaker reports

RAIN forced the abandonment of the third match in the Royal London Insurance series and with both sides winning a match the series was drawn.

When the Royal London Insurance ODI series started five days ago in the baking heat at Durham five days ago, who would have thought that the series would be affected by rain but it did.  At Emirates Old Trafford on Friday,  England won a rain reduced match by 118 runs and today at Headingley after two rain interruptions the match was called off at 4.04 with South Africa  on 159 for two after 27.4 overs.

Quinton De Kock top scored with an unbeaten 92 in what by far was his best knock of the series looked confident and easy.  He effortlessly reached his fifty from 39 balls.  He manoeuvred the ball well past the England fielders.  When England packed the offside to him, he went down the pitch to David Willey, had a wild swing but  got a thick inside edge to the third man boundary.  De Kock walked across his stumps to the next ball and turned it to the fine leg boundary.  He even uppercut Sam Curran to the third man boundary.

De Kock guided Adil  Rashid’s first ball into the attack to the third man boundary.  He then  whacked Rashid’s next  ball to the extra cover boundary to bring up his fifty with nine fours. In fact  Rashid’s first over was probably his worst in ODI cricket as nine runs came from it.

He said: “I’ve always been a decent white ball player. It’s nice to score runs for the team and spend some time in the middle.  There was a lot of swing out there so it was just a matter of soaking up the pressure and then put away the bad balls.”

After Janneman Malan was becalmed, he drove an over pitch ball from Reece Topley to the long off boundary and two balls later he nearly threw himself off his feet as he flat batted Topley again to the long off boundary but that was his last boundary.    In the next over he edged a drive off Willey to Jason Roy at point.

For the third consecutive match South Africa won the toss and this time South African captain Keshav Maharaj decided to bat.  Both teams were unchanged from Friday’s match.

Rassie Van Der Dussen elegantly cut Moeen Ali to the cover boundary to bring up the fifty partnership with De Kock in seven overs.  He top edged a sweep off Rashid straight to Jonny Bairstow on the square leg boundary.  Van Der Dussen was disgusted with himself for not keeping the ball down.


At 12.15 rain stopped play  and restarted at 2.15 with the match reduced to 45 overs per side.  After 6.5 overs the rain came back.  During those 6.5 overs Aiden Markram reversed swept Moeen Ali to the point boundary.  A single from Markram off Liam Livingstone brought up their fifty partnership in nine overs and also took him to 1,000 ODI runs.

England captain Jos Buttler said: “It’s a shame for everyone involved with the series set up at 1-1.  We didn’t have the same intensity for the first 10 overs that we had on Friday, we’ve got to make sure that we’re competing all the time.

The schedule makes it tough with having no training days which are important and vital to performances but it is what it is. I think that the way we one day cricket is the best way.

I think Topley has been a great find in taking early wickets.  He has looked a real threat.”

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