Sam Billings has hit back at South Africa captain Dean Elgar after he claimed England's new 'Bazball' style of play "can go south very quickly".
Speaking before a warm-up match against the England Lions, Elgar told the Observer : "I've got absolutely no interest in the style that they've played. I think it can go one of two ways for them and it can go south very quickly. [Talking about it] is a waste of energy. Their own coach doesn't even like the slogan they've come up with. I'd like to see them do it against our seamers."
However, South Africa were beaten by an innings and 56 runs by the Lions, who racked up 672 at a run rate of 5.74, with Harry Brook and Ben Duckett both scoring hundreds.
And Billings, who captained the Lions in that match and also scored 92 off 96 balls, has hit back at Elgar, saying he would be "pretty stupid to ignore" the new style of play after the defeat.
"We've beaten an international team over four days by an innings in a manner of scoring 5.74 an over," he told the Daily Mail . "You'd be pretty stupid to ignore that, if I'm honest.
"If that's not a wake-up call…. because we're not even the best XI. So, it's up to them, really, but I think that's laid out a pretty strong statement in the way we want the cricket to be played, but also being able to execute it and having the players to do that was really impressive.
"This is a very similar ground to Lord's with the slope and things like that. There's a couple of guys who Ollie Robinson had on toast this week. He bowled exceptionally well.
"It's a similar kind of ground and a similar kind of feel. So the fact we got 20 wickets on a pretty flat pitch that had six heavy rollers on….. What did we get? 672?
"It's impossible not to take confidence, certainly as a group, but some of the guys are in the Test squad as well and they'll take a lot of confidence into next week."
