England scored 67 runs at the loss of 2 wickets by lunch in Day 1 of the second Test of the four-match series against South Africa at Newlands in Cape Town.
On Friday, Joe Denly was unbeaten on 21 and Joe Root was batting on 4 when the umpires called for lunch.
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Earlier, England skipper Joe Root had won the toss and opted to bat. The Three Lions lost Zak Crawley (4) and Dominic Sibley (34) to Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada, respectively.
Notably, South Africa lead the series 1-0 as they had won the first match by 107 runs in Centurion.
“We are gonna bat first. Looks a good surface, hopefully, we can exploit that and get a good first inning score. Hopefully, we get back into the series,” Root had said after winning the toss.
“I would have (batted). There’s something in it in the first session. It’s a nice opportunity for us to get 3-4 wickets in the first session,” Faf du Plessis had said, adding, “We have only won one Test match, we’ve got three more Tests against a quality team. It’s just a start of a journey for us. We have to play well and especially start well.”
Here are the Playing XIs of both the teams:
South Africa: Pieter Malan, Dean Elgar, Zubayr Hamza, Faf du Plessis (captain), Rassie van der Dussen, Quinton de Kock (wicketkeeper), Dwaine Pretorius, Vernon Philander, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje
England: Dominic Sibley, Zak Crawley, Joe Denly, Joe Root (captain), Ben Stokes, Ollie Pope, Jos Buttler (wicketkeeper), Sam Curran, Dominic Bess, Stuart Broad, James Anderson
