England stage fightback after Kallis onslaught

CRICKET/South Africa v England: England came out fighting yesterday evening at Kingsmead, taking the battle back to the South Africans after Jacques Kallis's brilliant century had wrenched control of the second Test on a torrid afternoon for Michael Vaughan's attack.

In the penultimate over Andrew Strauss cracked out a square-cut off Dale Steyn so violently that it might have been a statement for South Africa to ponder overnight. Marcus Trescothick, too, though more restrained these past few weeks, punched Shaun Pollock back down the ground with no more follow-through than a Lennox Lewis knockout punch. There is still business to be done in this match, they seemed to be saying.

The pair will resume this morning having reduced a first-innings deficit of 193 by 30 and, with the pitch playing well, they can afford to carry some optimism into today's play.

The new ball offered some encouragement to Pollock in particular but the pitch is less erratic than on the first day and unless the weather closes in to allow swing bowling into the equation looks like behaving itself for the next day and beyond.

England will bat on in the knowledge that the last day here could produce the sort of uneven bounce on which tall pace bowlers such as Steve Harmison and Andy Flintoff can thrive as they force batsman back on to their stumps.

To get to that point, though, they would have to mix the sort of positive intent engendered during Vaughan's reign with the sort of diligence that brought Mike Atherton his 10-hour triumph at the Wanderers in 1996 .

A lead of 150 is unlikely to win them the game, not least because the pitch will not have had sufficient time to deteriorate: make that 300, though, and a day with which to work and they will be favourites. Vaughan must demand 500 second time around from a side that so far on this tour, with the notable exception of Strauss, has batted abysmally.

To this end they could do worse than study a video of Kallis's innings for, if ever a batsman applied his talent to lay a myth about a pitch, it was he.

England's pace bowlers, stung no doubt by the dismal display by the batsmen, hauled their side back into contention with a courageous performance in the morning. They suffered badly in the afternoon, though, as Kallis compiled an innings characterised by steel-wristed brilliance, a cool temperament and a chilling methodology.

In a little more than six hours he scarcely put a foot wrong until he was caught on the boundary hooking Matthew Hoggard, last out for 162. If not entirely single-handed - that would be ignoring the support he had from Pollock, Nicky Boje, Makhaya Ntini and Steyn in the lower order - he had seen South Africa from 52 for two on Sunday and 139 for six at lunch yesterday, level with England's first-innings total, to 332 all out.

Two hundred and fourteen runs came from the last four wickets, 120 to Kallis himself. He hit 21 fours and a pulled six and became the sixth South African to score more off his own bat than England had in their first innings.

By lunch yesterday he had seen his side lurch to equality having seen off, with the cheap dismissals of Martin van Jaarsveld, Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers, the possibility that they might actually concede a first-innings lead. After the interval, though, he found staunch and robust support from Pollock, a better batsman than his not immodest record suggests, who began the process of dissecting an attack still deprived through back injury of the calming influence of Ashley Giles.

Pollock may have been unfortunate to be given out caught behind off Vaughan's off-spin but his 43, and a stand of 87, had lifted the tempo and changed the shape of the day. The new ball came and went with little effect except to go harder off the bat, Kallis hitting Hoggard straight down the ground with little more than a short-arm push to reach his century, his sixth in his past eight home Tests and third on this ground.

If the lone trumpeter among the England fans, playing Men of Harlech as Simon Jones was being belted into oblivion towards the end, was trying to evoke memories of Rorke's Drift he was spot on. Where there is life there is hope but England will need all their resources to survive this onslaught.