South Africa skipper Dean Elgar rapped out another warning to England over their style of cricket despite trying his best to avoid the subject of 'Bazball'.
The Proteas batsman got a taste of the gung-ho aggression in a warm up defeat to the England Lions where Dan Lawrence, Harry Brook and Ben Duckett all took the visiting bowlers apart. But Elgar reckons his first choice attack will have more than enough to put the skids under Ben Stokes' side and things won’t look very good for them if a similar approach goes 'pear-shaped' this week.
“I am really not going to entertain that phrase anymore,” said Elgar. “We have chatted about it long and hard and I just want to crack on with the cricket.
“The game deserves that respect. Mudslinging is a thing of the past for me and we are not going to go back and forth around that.
“If England do have a flyer which I know somewhere they are going to. In the game they will have periods when they are on top of us no doubt, we are going to have to find a way to adapt to that situation. We come in with a lot more resources purely from a South Africa point of view, we have covered all bases to curb those moments in the game.
“We’ve come a long way and everyone has got a good buy-in to that adaptation and parking their personal stuff aside and doing what we require to slow down their batting for instance. The warm up was a good exercise and if they come out playing like that in an official Test match and it goes pear-shaped, that will not look very good for England.
“I would have liked to have seen what it was like if it was an official four-day game. I think you play a little bit differently if you are playing for stats, you play a little differently as a player.”
Elgar is looking to attack England with his own uncompromising style and he is confident that his key fast bowler Kagiso Rabada will be fit to take his place in the side after his left ankle trouble.
And with the fastest bowler on show, Anrich Nortje, fit and firing, England’s batters may well have their hands a little fuller than they did against New Zealand and India. “What England did, the conditions were pretty nice to bat in during those specific Tests,” added Elgar.
“Chasing the scores they did, it was something I was also blown away with, it was pretty impressive but I would like to think the bowlers we have, even if the wickets are pretty flat, I think we have covered our bases.
“With regards to our bowling unit, we can bowl them out even if they are chasing. I am pretty confident because we have done it in the past. It might be hard work for us but this is what we are here to do.
“We are not here to play soft-natured cricket, we want it hard and really tough and hopefully the results go our way.”
