England v South Africa – 1st Test Review

On Sunday, England wrapped up an ultimately comfortable 211-run victory over South Africa on a highly eventful fourth day at Lord’s where the last 19 wickets of the 1st Test fell.

It was the perfect start to Joe Root’s England captaincy career, and his charges will go into Friday’s second Test at Trent Bridge in Nottingham in great spirits.

There were a number of personal milestones achieved in the Test, some of which we accurately flagged here:

Moeen Ali (England)

England’s spinning all-rounder had the best match of his 38 Test England career to date, thoroughly deserving of his Man-of-the-Match award at the Home of Cricket.

His career best second innings figures of 6-53 were enough to see his name etched onto the famous Lord’s 5-wicket honours board for the second time, and his maiden ten-for in the match overall had the engraver working overtime as Moeen got himself on that board too.

The ten wickets saw him move from 98 scalps before the game to 108 by play’s end, and with the willow his 87 runs in the first innings also saw him past 2000 career runs. In terms of Tests played, Moeen became the second fastest England player to reach the 100 wickets/2000 runs double, in just one game more than the late Tony Greig.

All in all, a pretty good four days for the Worcestershire man!

James Anderson (England)

England’s all-time highest Test wicket-taker earned himself a world record in the Test, but it was with the bat not the ball that he etched his name into the record books.

When Jonny Bairstow became England’s tenth wicket to fall in their second innings, it left the Burnley Lara not-out in Tests for the 62nd time. He had previously shared the world record of 61 not-outs with the legendary West Indian fast bowler Courtney Walsh, but he can now lay claim to the record all by himself.

Hashim Amla (South Africa)

Although Hashim’s 40 runs in the test were not enough to see him to 8,000 runs just yet, let alone to move past AB de Villiers in third place overall for the Proteas, he did make an appearance in both batting innings, moving him to 177 innings for his country. This moved him past both de Villiers and Gary Kirsten into 4th place overall for South Africa.

Joe Root (England)

With his first-innings ton, England’s new skipper became the fourth consecutive England captain to make a century on their captaincy debut following Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Strauss and Alistair Cook.

Root’s 190 was the highest score by an England captain on captaincy debut surpassing the 173 Cook scored in his first game in charge against Bangladesh in 2010.