England captain Michael Vaughan said on Monday that England had always believed that they could win the fourth Castle Lager/MTN cricket Test against South Africa.
England won the Test by 77 runs, after dismissing South Africa for 247 in their second innings to take an unassailable two-one lead in the race for the Basil D’Oliveira Trophy.
”The opinion of a lot of so-called experts was that we couldn’t win today.
”The opinion of our team was that if we batted well in the first hour and a half today, the game was ours to win,” he said. ”We don’t ever accept that we can’t win a game, just because people write that we can’t.”
”We knew we had to bat well. Trescothick’s innings was very, very special, as was Andrew Strauss’s in the first innings. The way Tres took the game to South Africa with fast scoring allowed us to declare in a fashion where we could set attacking fields.
”With those attacking fields, we were able to put South Africa under pressure, and go on to win the game. But you’ve still got to put the ball in the right area and our bowlers did that. All I asked from them when we went out was to give it their all for 60 or 70 overs, and they did just that.
”It was a very special victory,” he continued. ”We’ve had some great wins over the last year, but to bowl a South African team out in two sessions was truly an amazing effort.
”It was a very tough game mentally. It’s been very up and down, with quite a few interruptions, so to come back and win showed an amazing amount of mental resolve.”
South African captain Graeme Smith said South Africa had just not played well enough. ”Marcus [Trescothick] played superbly. They took the game to us this morning, and they scored too quickly, without us taking quick wickets. And once we got in to bat, we had to bat two sessions, and we just didn’t do it well enough.
”A lot of credit has to go to Matthew Hoggard. He got the ball to swing, and he put it in the right areas, and made the wicket look like it was doing something.”
Smith said the middle order needed to take a hard look at themselves. ”We’ re losing too many quick wickets at once. Their bowling attack was tired and sore today, but we kept giving them a sniff. And the more sniff we gave them, the more the injuries seemed to go away, and the better they bowled.”
He said the defeat was one of the toughest he had had to accept.
”It’s always tough to lose at home,” he said. ”But what made it tougher was that we’d played so well in the Test. Batting in that first innings to get ahead was crucial, and we had them under pressure.
”We seem to get teams under pressure, and then we take the finger off just a little bit, and that’s all they need to come back into the game.”
Smith, who batted against medical advice, after being hit on the head in fielding practice on Sunday, said he had batted because he needed to bat for his team. ”In the end, it didn’t matter,” he said.
”It was nice to get some runs, but it didn’t really help the cause.”
Smith said South Africa needed to regroup and bounce back in the fifth and final Test. ”The way the series has gone, it’s been up and down. Every day, every session has been different, but we’ll work on ways of coming back.”
The convenor of selectors, Haroon Lorgat, said the selectors were considering calling up a bowler as cover for Charl Langeveldt in case Langeveldt did not recover in time to play in the final Test. – Sapa