{"id":129249,"date":"2025-09-11T05:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T05:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/129249\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T05:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T05:36:07","slug":"england-vs-south-africa-harry-brook-says-rain-reduced-opening-t20-was-shambles-of-a-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/129249\/","title":{"rendered":"England vs South Africa: Harry Brook says rain-reduced opening T20 was &#8216;shambles of a night&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">England captain Harry Brook described the rain-reduced T20 between England and South Africa in Cardiff as a &#8220;shambles of a night&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A delayed start until 20:50 BST saw the match reduced to nine overs a side and the tourists reached 97-5 after 7.5 overs before another downpour, which gave England a revised target of 69 from five. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The hosts fell short on 54-5 to go 1-0 down in the three-match series, though Brook felt there was nothing to glean from the contest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They got nine overs, we got five overs. You can&#8217;t take much from it,&#8221; said Brook.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was a bit of a shambles. It was a long, long day but I don&#8217;t think we need to make any excuses up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We probably didn&#8217;t execute as well as we should have done with bat and ball but it&#8217;s hard when you only bat for five overs.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The original playing conditions stated there would be a 2.4 over powerplay and that four bowlers could bowl a maximum of two overs each and one bowler could bowl one, which curiously did not change once England&#8217;s target was adjusted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Earlier, England made a late change to their team to remove Jofra Archer from the XI considering the conditions, and he was replaced by Luke Wood who took 2-22. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It would have been stupid to play him with the amount of cricket we&#8217;ve got coming up,&#8221; Brook added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If he&#8217;d have gone out and done what <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/cricket\/articles\/czd0g88j2ypo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Adam Hose did in The Hundred<\/a> and broken his leg or whatever, that would have been a shambles.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Archer has been reintroduced to international cricket this summer with his first Test in four years and the hope that he will be fit for the winter&#8217;s Ashes in Australia. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Brook would not be drawn on whether the game should have gone ahead, adding that it was simply &#8220;up to the umpires&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The series continues at Old Trafford on Friday, where there is also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/weather\/6691246\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a mixed forecast.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England captain Harry Brook described the rain-reduced T20 between England and South Africa in Cardiff as a &#8220;shambles&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-129249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}