South Africa vs England (2012)

All that could change though, in a month's time RSA could snatch both those positions from ENG and become the first team to hold all the the No.1 spots of Tests, ODI's and T20's at the same time!!! all they need is series wins in Tests, ODI's and T20's on this tour!!!

Is this the end of road for KP?  If those text were sent by him and the content is what Clobs had posted, I am not sure if that should lead to a permanent damage.

I agree he should not have sent any of those messages esp. to an opponent team,but the first two message which relates to England about Coach and Captain is not derogatory by any means. The final one , the third message is however "England only got to No 1 by beating crap teams" is the something to be concerned, coz it kind of undermines the team's hard work and achievement, but then India played badly in that tour, while they had hard earned victory against the Aussies.

 

I know KP is a really good player, made a fantastic century in the last game, but a professional approach to the game by Flower and co is why England are where they are now, and good of them to stay on that part.  Its why they can be on top and England and Pakistan will fight for the scraps - those 2 boards got no balls!!

One thing I found strange about the KP episode... the ECB delayed naming the final test squad by half a day so that KP could apologize, turns out that KP apologizes for statements made after the headingly test and addressed his issues w.r.t his availability etc... they said he didn't apologize for the text messages he sent and hence he was not picked.

Now KP has apologized for the texts, and now they say there are issues pertaining to "Trust and Mutual respect" which will take "time" to get sorted out ... so what was all that drama of delaying the squad announcement by half a day, if they already knew the problem will take "Time" to get addressed anyways? pathetic illogical people! 

However, I also agree that whatever statements KP made after Headingly were unnecessary, and highlighted his irresponsible and arrogant attitude, esp since he made those statements after scoring a match saving century, may be he was thinking now he is bigger than the team that he has got runs.

Unfortunate but the way they have played since getting to No 1 status does not  auger well, 3-0 loss to Pakistan, 1-1 draw against SL, 2-0 win against WI (1 draw) and it almost looks like 2-0 loss at home to SA unless few batsman from English camp do what VVS and RD did in Kolkata 2001.It's a situation like that.

Before the series started I had said that if they do not win this series, they would probably go down as No 1 that wasn't, the results don't speak much in their case, in many matches that they lost, it was close ... which could have gone either way, probably it was just a bad time, but then it is the cost of being No 1.Home or Away, it is always difficult to be Number 1 for a long time. England were lucky in a way, their points had reduced midway, but as rankings calculations were recalculated their points again increased by 6 points few months back, even that was not sufficient to retain the No 1 spot (I mean in all likelihood tomorrow).They got themselves to blame, bit of selections, some drops cost them dearly and maybe some form issues too with key players. I had never thought that England would be in such a situation, at max, I felt England will draw the series if they had a bad season.

For me lesson learnt , never guess what happens in England, for second time in a row my anticipations/ prediction/ guess has been way of the mark.

Now beating England won't fetch much points, got to hunt SA down to get that spot .