My England story.

[Ash2134]

Here are the teams for the first test:

Day 1: We lose the toss and are to bowl first on a solid batting pitch with sunny conditions predicted for all 5 days. Finn gets us off to a brilliant start by taking 3 wickets in his opening spell. We continue to bowl brilliantly and have them all out for 153 just before the end of the 2nd session. We end the day on 99-1 with Root of 53*.

Day 2: We bat for the whole day and finish up on 388-4 with Root scoring 127 and Ballance at the crease on 84.

Day 3: Ballance gets to his century but is then removed quickly afterwards. Half way through the day we are all out for 506. Finn once again gets both their openers out and Woakes then comes on a bowls a great spell picking up 2 wickets until he gets injured! They end the day on 136-4.

Day 4: They put up a fight with a few 50s down the line but we get them all out to win by over an innings.

Batting Award: Root, A good patient innings that set us off to a great start.

Bowling Award: Finn, bowled very well in both innings.

Series State: 1-0 up with 3 matches remaining.

[Ash2134]

For the next match we bring in Stokes for Woakes who is out for 6 days. They stick with the same team.

Day 1: We lose the toss and are forced to bowl first on a good pitch in sunny conditions. Anderson gets us off to great start by getting De Kock and Amla out early on. Heading into the last 3 overs of the day they were 330-3 where we managed to get Smith out for 161 and Van Zyl for 77. They end the day on 343-6.

Day 2: We manage to finish them off for 405 mainly thanks to a quick 48 from Philander. We have a tough start and head into the last session on 145-5 with Ballance and Prior at the crease. We end up all out for 244 with 1 over left in the day, we were in danger of not avoiding the follow on for a bit until Ballance and Swann formed a partnership of 60. They block out the last over of the day.

Day 3: We get a perfect start to the day with Anderson and Finn removing their top 4 before South Africa had even reached 50. We don't make the most of this start and they get above 20 from everyone else and score 219 all out and set us a target of 381. This will be a tough chase but we do have just over 2 days to do it. We make a good start to the chase and finish the day on 50-0, a solid foundation from our openers would put us in with a great chance of making this chase.

Day 4: We lose Cook early on and Pietersen follows him straight away. Trott also returns to the pavilion not long after. Root and Ballance then stabilise our innings with a partnership of 134 which ended in the last over before tea when Root was caught behind just after reaching the century mark. We start the next session with Bell getting a duck in this innings as well as the first, He has been really disappointing in the last few years for me! We then lose Ballance 30 minutes later for a valiant 69. We need 101 to win with just 4 wickets remaining. We then get within 60 runs of our target and lose 3 wickets in quick succession and the match is looking like its lost now. We then end up coming up 47 runs short.

Batting Award: Ballance, 2 good half centuries especially in the first innings when noone was sticking around.

Bowling Award: Anderson, Took 10 wickets in the match. He bowled very well all match long.

Series State: 1-1 with 2 matches remaining.

[Ash2134]

We bring back in Woakes for Stokes as he has now recovered from his injury. We also bring in Harris for Swann who has struggled in this series. They name the same team.

Day 1: We lose the toss and they decide to bat first on another good batting pitch. Overcast conditions are forecasted for random sessions across the 2nd, 3rd and 4th days with rain predicted for the whole 5th day. We have a terrible start as they are 200-0 before we take our first wicket as we pick up De Kock for 97. We need some quick wickets to turn this around. They end the day on 353-6 with Smith on 161* and we really need to get him our early tomorrow.

Day 2: We manage to get them all out for 535 with us finally getting Smith out for 270! What a drastic change from the way the first match went. We end the day on 86-0, a decent start but still a long way to go.

Day 3: We lose Root and Pietersen fairly early on and then the rain comes and we lose over an hour of the day. We end the day on 287-9 with Cook being the mainstay of our innings scoring 95. We are still 49 runs away from avoiding the follow on.

Day 4: We then lose our last wicket without adding to our total. We are then asked to follow on and Cook gets out straight way but then Pietersen and Root start batting well and we head into the last session with them both looking good on 68 and 81 respectively. We then lose Pietersen straight after he makes his 100 and we end the day on 253-2 with Root on 111*.

Day 5: We then bat through a rain affected day and finish up on 431-4 with Ballance on 81* for a comfortable draw.

Batting Award: Root, Brilliant century in a high pressure situation.

Bowling Award: Harris, Got the key wickets of their upper order.

Series State: 1-1 with 1 match remaining.

[Ash2134]

We name the same team, they make one change by dropping Morris for Kleinveldt.

Day 1: We win the toss this time around and choose to bat first on a good pitch. We make a good start and reach 169 before we lose our first wicket of Root for 59. We finish the day on 290-3 with Cook providing 150 of those runs.

Day 2: We continue batting Well with Bell making a 50 and Trott making a century until he was forced to retire hurt on 106. We end up all out for 512 with half an hour left in the day. They end the day on 29-0.

Day 3: We get smith out early on but then De Kock and Amla form a strong partnership and end the first session both on 50s. Then shortly into the afternoon session De Kock is forced to retire hurt on 70 but luckily for them they do have another keeper in the team. We then struggle to take wickets and they end the day on 412-3 with Amla on 184*.

Day 4: We finally get Amla out for 247 and then we have them all out half way through the day for 522. We try to score at a strong rate so that we can set a target and give ourselves a chance to win this series, our upper order struggle but Prior and Woakes form a good partnership and we end the day on 243-6 with a lead of 233.

Day 5: We set them a target of 254 with 2 and a half sessions left in the day. At the end of the first session they are 41-2. They end the second session with 4 wickets remaining and needing 111 to win and it looks like one team will win this match and the series. However Finn comes out all guns blazing and takes the last wickets we require to win in the first 30 minutes of the session. What a great match to finish off a tightly contested series.

Batting Award: Cook, He looked so comfortably in his innings of 150.

Bowling Award: Finn, Top bowling at the end of the match and finished up with 10 wickets.

Series State: We win 2-1.

[Ash2134]

Series Summary

Batting Award: Root, Batted consistently for the whole series and scored some brilliant centuries!

Bowling Award: Finn, just edges Anderson to the award as he took a couple more wickets and took more key wickets when we needed him to.

[Ash2134]

Next up on our tour is a 5 match ODI series against South Africa, Here is the squad selected for the series:

We are forced to leave Trott out as he is injured for the next 4 weeks, so we bring In Tong who had a great year in domestic one day cricket.