England win Test by 9 wickets and series 2-1

London – 12 September.

It took just 5.3 overs for England to knock off the remaining 33 runs on the fifth morning to wrap up the third and final Test with a nine-wicket victory over South Africa. The win gives England the series at 2-1 and with it the Basil D’Oliveira trophy. England had won the first Test by an innings and lost the second by an innings.

England captain, Ben Stokes said: “It’s been a great series for us as a team, no real individual stand-out performances, but different people at different times have broken the game open at different times. The conditions we’ve found on day one, the toss is one you want to win, but you have to execute your plans, and counteract the team that does win it.”

With bad light causing play to stop the previous evening with England on 97 without loss and having been set a target of 130 to win, players had to return to the ground the next morning when England took just 26 minutes to hit the required runs.

There had been some criticism of the umpires for not allowing the game to continue to a finish on the fourth evening but they stuck to the rules for the light although a common sense approach, with the two captains agreement would have been a sensible option.

England lost the wicket of Alex Lees in the third over of the morning after he had added seven runs to his overnight 32 with Kagiso Rabada trapping his lbw. The umpire turned down the appeal but the DRS overruled the decision.

Meanwhile Zak Crawley had gone on to 60 from 57 overnight and went on to add two fours to the ten he hit on the fourth day. He hit a thrashing square drive off Rabada which took him to 65 after his new partner Ollie Pope had pulled Marco Jansen for four.

They were quick in taking singles and finally Crawley, who has not been in fine form until this innings, drove Jansen beautifully to cover for the winning boundary to end the Test with an unbeaten 69 from 57 balls faced.

Ollie Robinson was voted the player of the match and captain Ben Stokes was the England player of the series while Rabada was for South Africa. Jonny Bairstow, absent in this match through injury, was player of the summer for his performance in the two series.

South Africa captain, Dean Elgar said: “It’s not been great for me in Test matches, but a lot of fond memories (from playing for Surrey) at The Oval. A good first innings helped us at Lord’s, first-innings runs are so big in the UK, and we’ve failed in that department.”

He added: “Tough decision [re selection], it didn’t work this game, but lots of eye-opening experiences for those guys. I’ve got to give our bowlers credit, they ran in and did all that was asked of them, but it all boils down to our batting.”