"For much of the second day South Africa were blocking their way to victory with, appropriately enough for a side sponsored by a brewery, a laager mentality," writes Martin Johnson in the Telegraph. "But they now know they will only win this series over Andrew Flintoff’s dead body, which may well be the case if England continue to saddle him with the workload of a Skegness donkey."
England have tried many variations in an attempt to unsettle the visitors this summer – including selecting bowlers who no one has heard of — but yesterday their beleaguered captain was reduced to the two most familiar ploys of recent times. Plan A: throw the ball to Flintoff. Plan B: give him half an hour off, then throw him the ball again.
"It takes great players, or men at the top of their form, to turn Test series around. The last time England played South Africa they had a full set of trumps: Marcus Trescothick, Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison among them. But right now, Flintoff is carrying this whole team on his back. No wonder he was so anxious to make his fiery spell count," writes Simon Briggs, also in the Telegraph.
"The plan to bowl yorkers at Kallis was hatched during a tea-time chat with England's bowling coach, Ottis Gibson, and Michael Vaughan, and Flintoff admitted he was aided by the dark windows in the pavilion that caused both Kallis and Mark Boucher to lose sight of the ball. But that did not detract from the sustained brilliance of his 10-ball mini-spell to South Africa's very own Table Mountain," writes Lawrence Booth in the Guardian.
Also in the Guardian, Mike Selvey says, "'For 15 minutes yesterday evening, as the crowd bayed and adrenaline pumped, a day's cricket that had carried a dull inevitability about it was stripped down to bare-knuckle fighting, a gladiatorial contest between a great batsman and a colossal fast bowler."
"Nothing has gone right for him this summer," writes Simon Hughes in the Telegraph. "After a woeful series against New Zealand, a man who strains every sinew and some for his country assumed things could not get worse. They did. The controversy at the Oval, when as England's one-day captain he decided not to withdraw the appeal for the run-out of Grant Elliot after his collision with Ryan Sidebottom, came back to haunt him. He admitted as much the day after he was erroneously given out at Lord's in the first South African Test, caught off his pad for seven."
"In imperfect light he [Flintoff] bowled venomously at Kallis. The first ball of the over was a bouncer which whistled past Kallis' nose. He probably smelt the cordite. The next two were quick and slanted in; Kallis was rattled. The fourth ball was a ripsnorter, full and swinging away. It ripped out Kallis's off stump," writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.
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