1009 not out

I understood every single word.....lol

Well the pitch obviously didn't contribute to the dropped catches but I'm sure it played a part in both teams bowlers hardly being able to trouble the batsman?

I'm not an expert or anything and if anybody is on here then feel free to put me right, but if none of us had seen the game and read the reports but just seen the scorecards, I'd think that most of us would have thought the pitch must have been flat.

The batsman were troubled as evidenced by the 10 dropped catches. Flat wickets don't create that number of opportunities. You can't judge a pitch based simply on reading a scorecard. A scorecard never tells you the full story.

I watched every single ball bowled and that pitch did more than enough to trouble batsman. There was pace and bounce.throughout. Along with England's 10 drops, South Africa had two dropped catches of their own, while Morne Morkel had Joe Root caught off a no ball.

The one thing that helped the batsman was the weather - there was no cloud cover until the fifth day (when we finally saw some swing) and there was also a strong breeze for the bowlers to bowl into. England were in real trouble in their first innings and it took some incredible batting combined with poor bowling for them to post the score they did.

As I said in my previous post, not all big scores are the result of a flat wicket.

How can a pitch affect a fielder dropping a catch? I think the fact they was out there for that many hours that it was a lack of concentration that was the problem more than anything, but we'll have to agree to disagree on that one then.

It sets it up nicely for the third test anyway.

The pitch caused enough trouble for the batsman to create those dropped catches. The pace and bounce caused the batsman trouble, leading them to play false shots and the ball finding edges. The fact that the catches were dropped is irrelevant. Flat pitches don't create that number of opportunities.

Michael Atherton and Mikey Holding on the TV broadcast and Jonathan Agnew on radio all agreed with this. Holding was quite outspoken against those questioning/judging this pitch based on the scorecard alone.

We're getting off topic here and were talking about a totally different game than what the thread started off about, so all I'll say is that a poor shot choice could also be to blame for giving the fielders the amount of chances they had.

On a flat pitch, if I hit a shot directly to a fielder and he drops the catch, then that's my fault, not the fault of the pitch. I don't think the South African batsman chose their shots too well, but again that was about concentration more than them being bad players (we know they're not)

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/top-stories/...cleshow/50463448.cms

Well after reading that article, that score is sounding less and less impressive to be honest and while in one way anybody that scores that many runs needs a pat on the back, if the stage is practically set up for you to do it, then I'm not sure his record should go down in the history books to be honest.