Morne Morkel

Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel add chilli, thyme and allspice

Any sign that fast bowling’s back in fashion is good, but does the victim have to be the West Indies? Dale Steyn took 5-29 and Morne Morkel took 4-19. Great stuff, but you feel bad for who’s on the receiving end.

It’s like eating lamb. It’s delicious, but it’s best to tuck in without thinking about the woolly people who have lost their lives so that you might enjoy your barbecue.

Why can’t fish be tastier? Fish are the vegetables of the sea. Eating fish doesn’t lead to much guilt despite the fact that we feel guilty for pretty much everything. Sometimes we feel guilty for nothing. We’ll just wake up with a sense of guilt hanging over us and resign ourself to enduring it for the rest of the day. Those are good days. The feeling distracts us from our default feeling of worthlessness.

Morne Morkel seems rather handy

Who needs spinners when you’ve got bowlers like Morne Morkel? Pace, bounce, seam, swing, accuracy and stamina. It’s a quick bowling full house. England need a five-man attack to cover all those bases.

Can he stay free from injury? Will he bowl well in tighter matches than these? Probably – but that’s based on nothing more than post-10-wicket-defeat English pessimism.

Actually, we’re not upset at all. We’re quite content. We like fast bowlers. We like bowlers who get the better of the world’s pudgy, complacent batsmen and we also like people whose names rhyme with ’snorkel’. Another full house.

England v South Africa second Test at Headingley, day four
England 203 all out (Morne Morkel 4-52, Dale Steyn 4-76)
South Africa 522 all out (A B de Villiers 174, Ashwell Prince 149, Monty Panesar 3-65, James Anderson 3-136)
England 327 all out (Stuart Broad 67 not out, Alastair Cook 60, Morne Morkel 3-61, Dale Steyn 3-97)
South Africa 9-0
South Africa win and lead the series 1-0

Get to know the South African team

This is a guide to a few of the newer South African players. You shouldn’t cut it out, nor should you keep it. You should read it once, sigh and think to yourself: ‘I already knew all that. I remember when this site was good.’

Paul Harris

Paul Harris is a South African spin bowler. Don’t let his competent record fool you. He’s still a South African spin bowler.

Like all South African spin bowlers, he’s 29 already, even though he’s ‘new’.

Hashim Amla

You sort of remember him from when England toured South Africa in 2004, when his beard was all the more lovable for the short periods of time it was inside a batting helmet. It wasn’t a great series for Amla.

Unfortunately Hashim Amla has rather pushed on. In his last ten Tests – against New Zealand, West Indies, Bangladesh and India – he’s bearded three hundreds and averaged 58.8. It’s customary at these times to remove any scores against Bangladesh, so let’s do that.

Now he averages 64.4.

Hopefully this form won’t last and having hit a hundred in each of South Africa’s warm-up matches, Amla’s clearly frittering away his reservoir of runs at the wrong time. The hirsute fool!

Dale Steyn

Think James Anderson with another 5mph of pace and no bad days.

Morne Morkel

Morne Morkel’s one we’re looking forward to seeing. He’s fast and ludicrously oversized. Not ludicrously oversized in a lanky Steve Harmison way, more in an undue pressure on the pituitary gland kind of way.