In his column in the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain writes that Andrew Strauss did the right thing by denying Graeme Smith a runner at Centurion, but disagress with the England captain's decision to recall Sri Lanka's Angelo Mathews after a run-out appeal. He adds that it was a very different incident to the one at The Oval last year in which Ryan Sidebottom basically took out New Zealand's Grant Elliott.

I have watched the England bowlers closely over the last few months and I think they are making a deliberate attempt to try to make sure batsmen have to run around them rather than allowing them to complete their runs in a straight line.

That is fine. It is streetwise, it is within the laws and, as a captain who played with a win-at- all-costs attitude, I am not going to criticise anyone for playing the game in the same way.

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley meets the unlikely hero in Centurion, Owais Shah, who somehow played the innings of his life to shake off a hopeless run of form.

Mr Hyde, who had been overstaying his welcome and appeared resistant to desperate blandishments to shove off, has for the time being left. Dr Jekyll is in town. Owais Shah perfectly symbolises this dichotomy. In his case choose any antonymic extreme you fancy: chalk, cheese, lager, beer, day, night, beautiful, ugly.

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