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While England polished off their two opening One Day warm up fixtures, with consummate ease, their foray into the realms of Twenty20 did not go quite so well. This was England’s only Twenty20 warm up game ahead of the two-game series against South Africa starting on Friday, and it was nothing short of a disaster. England were dismissed for just 89, with Alistair Cook top scoring on 22. England were skittled out in just over seventeen over, leaving South Africa A to cruise to victory. The South Africans lost 6 wickets in the process of chasing down the poor total, but they still did it with about three overs remaining. This will have been a disappointing effort with the bat especially, with England’s only fit eleven players having to take part.

With Stuart Broad, James Anderson, Graham Onions and needing some time to recover from injuries, with Andrew Strauss not playing in the shortest format of the game, and with the squad awaiting the arrival of Kevin Pietersen after his injury woes, the team that took the field for the warm up match, sort of picked itself. That is no excuse for such a poor showing through, especially after looking very dominant in their two one day matches, beating the Eagles and the Warriors. While the Twenty20 matches against South Africa will pale into comparison of importance against the One Day Internationals and the Test Matches, the dismal showing means that England will need to pick themselves back up again.

Another injury worry occurred after the game with spinner Graeme Swann complaining, but there is good news that the Stuart Broad injury should clear up in time to get back to action against the Proteas when it matters most. This game is not what Twenty20 captain Paul Collingwood would have wanted to see, and now they just have three days to pull everything back together ahead of the first Twenty20 match. Meanwhile South Africa demolished Zimbabwe in their second warm-up One Day match, winning by a massive 212 runs. England will do well to even compete in the Twenty20 and One Day series against a South African side which is still regarded as being the best in the World at the moment, despite what happened at the Champions trophy, where they were beaten by England and Sri Lanka.

South Africa v England Twenty20 Series (two games)
Drawn Series: 6/5 at Totesport
South Africa: 6/4 at Ladbrokes
England: 5/1 at Totesport

South Africa v England ODI Series (five games)
South Africa: 2/5 at Totesport
England: 9/4 at Extrabet
Drawn Series: 37/2 at Betfair