Proteas captain Dean Elgar has made the England media’s bekke tjoepstil on the eve of their first Test at Lord’s on Wednesday at 12pm.
The buzzword in England cricket at the moment is Bazball - a reference to new coach Brendon McCullum’s nickname Baz. It describes the aggressive approach the Poms have in Test cricket since the Kiwi took charge of captain Ben Stokes and his manne earlier this year.
Since then, they have won all four Tests they played in, going all-out with both bat and ball in hand.
The Proteas have now been fielding questions about Bazball heeltyd in the build-up to the game and yesterday when asked about it again, Elgar haak’d af: “With all due respect, I’m really not going to entertain that anymore. We’ve chatted about it long and hard, I just want to crack on with the cricket. The game deserves that respect. Mudslinging is now a thing of the past for me and we’re not going to go back and forth on that.”
Doing the talking on the pitch, the Proteas are expected to bring back Kagiso Rabada from an ankle injury.
They will, however, be without Temba Bavuma for the clash.
Of their options in the middle-order to replace Bavuma, Elgar says: “Purely because we’ve lost that experience factor in the middle order, I am inclined to go with the experience we have within our batters.
“We have the option of [Aiden] Markram, [Rassie] van der Duseen, [Ryan] Rickleton and [Khaya] Zondo. It’s up to the coach and the selectors to finalise the top five, but from my side it’s obviously the experience factor.”
dudley.carstens@inl.co.za