England in trouble at Headingley

12 April 2012

England nightwatchman James Anderson defied painful blows to the wrist and head from Dale Steyn - but his brave and skilful innings appeared likely to be in vain at Headingley.

Anderson was hit by successive short deliveries by the South Africa paceman but, with company from England opener Alastair Cook (46no), made a career-best 34 out of 130 for four.

England lost Anderson and more importantly Kevin Pietersen, however, before lunch on day four of the second Test and therefore remained highly likely to go 1-0 down in this four-match series - having conceded a 319-run first-innings lead.

Pietersen made just 13, and his exit left England at lunch needing another 189 runs to make the tourists bat again with a shortage of frontline batsmen remaining.

The only near miss for England in the first hour-and-a-half of a sunny morning, on a sound pitch, had come when Anderson pushed a single to cover off the last ball of a Makhaya Ntini over and would have been run out on four by a direct hit from Steyn.

Instead, the ball missed the stumps and sped away for four overthrows.

After being hit twice, it was not a surprise when Steyn pinned Anderson lbw on the crease with a full-length delivery.

New batsman Pietersen was clearly reading from a different script to one of crease occupation as his cameo 13 lasted just five balls, containing three fours, and was all over when he pushed forward and edged behind a ball of testing line and length from Jacques Kallis.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in