PIETERSEN

He has the wood over SA. The bloke is a genius. The determination of the man not to lose to SA just drives the rest of the English team on.

morili, SA should never have lost this game... if the same game was played over 10 times, SA would win 9 of them. SA had a lot of SOFT dismisals, & I actually don't rate your bowlers highly..apart from Flintoff, & newcomer Broad may have something big to contribute in years to come....batting yes I do, of course with the BIG HELP OF PETERSON.

no sour grapes from me, morili take this win & savour it.....the result is on the board & England go 1/ NIL up.

and waste his skills...broader perspective, no blame attached, to KP...what are his options
come back here, and do what ...maybe try switching sports,try getting into soccer...oops BIG MISTAKE...all politically correct, right colour "no rogress', crowd pleasers,...gullible viewers.

Hey Mori...this is reality

The man is a fresh of breath air, like a friend of mine once drunkenly declared. I will part with my hard earned cash any time to watch him bat. Some of our lads can definitely learn from his intensity and focus.

As for last night's game, we were not the side of old. In previous years, we had Shaun Pollock coming in as low down as 9 with Boucher at 8. Now that's a batting line-up. Last night's side was mediocre, the return of the Morkels will bolster it a bit, and although Ant Botha has worked hard on his batting, he is not, and never will be, worthy of the 7 slot in an international cricket side. He is the type of guy you want coming in at 9 (one day cricket). And when Albie Morkel does come back into the side, it's time for him to put his hand up. I'm a big fan of his, but he needs to take the step up to the big stage and put in some big performances.

And as for KP backing himself by putting himself on to bowl at a stage when SA were dominating, sheer balls.


Sorry Mr. Philander, I don't know why you are in this team, but merit cannot be the reason (I humbly stand open for correction if anyone can show me any decent stats supporting his inclusion). I hope he has skipped breakfast and headed straight for the catching practice area. The catch he dropped was the difference between the two sides if you tally-up the extra runs it cost. Yes, catches will be dropped from time to time, BUT NOT THAT CATCH. My daughter could have caught it. And he is @#%#*&% lucky that he caught the second one. Enough now, he will be dropped anyway.

GO BOKKE!!!!!

Gavross

How on earth does Philander get to play for the 2nd best side in the world? I have seen better players in the village leagues. He blocked out 9 balls in a row last night. Did somebody not tell him it was a 50 over match and not a test match. Surely there is at least one player in South Africa that is better than him.

KP really got stuck into some of the newer faces in SA team last night, verbal sledging left right and centre. No offence to KP lovers but he's still a royal prick in my book.

Southpaw- Whilst I respect your views, I must disagree with your take as far as the sledging bit is concerned.
Pietersen is only emulating what the South African cricketers have being doing ever since Mickey Authur and Smith took over the reins.The doyens of verbal sledging in SA cricket in as follows Graeme Smith,Boucher,Kallis(to a lesser extent), and Andre Nel. The verbal sledging of KP stands no chance with the above SA players.

In my book, KP has done the right thing by jumping ship. Remember.HE WAS CONSIDERED NOT GOOD ENOUGH to play for the Dolphins let alone the Proteas. He has done what any intellectual person would have done. I am sure you would have done the same if you did not have job satisfaction.

Oops SA 36/4. You look like a bunch of school boys out there

45/5 Doubt if SA will reach 100

In my view the SA 50 overs side is on it's way down; this has been brought about by a couple of factors. As has been pointed out by other posters, the batting line-up is not what it used to be, our bowlers have become very predictable with almost no variation. We also lack a top class spinner (not that we had one for a long time now). And off course we miss Shaun.

Compare that to the test side, where we seem to be heading in the right direction; both Steyn and Morne Morkel are made for test cricket and should perhaps not even be playing in the shorter form of the game; we have a very comptetent top six, so things are looking up in this form of the game.

With regards to today's match, and taking into account what a moderate (imo) bowler like Broad is getting out of the pitch, perhaps our captain should have bowled first. According to the commentators, Kallis stated that the previous game was on of our worst performances in 2 years; guess he didn't think it could get any worse; but it just did, 46/5 and the game seems lost already.

50/6 Why is Amla not in your team

Players in SA get labeled quite easily as a 'one day' or a 'test' player; and then it is very hard for them to change that label; Neil Mckenzie and Amla are cases in point; both of them are considered 'too slow' for the one day game, but I have seen Mckenzie scoring at more than a run a ball in the national conpetitions plenty of times. I think our selectors are too rigid in our thinking.

That being said, we are definitely not as bad as we had shown today, and I expect them to come back in the next game; but even if they do come back and win the next 3 games, the danger signals are definitely there imo.