England has left out Graeme Swann in the second test match against South Africa and brought Steve Finn into the team. The wicket at Headingly had some grass on it. So, the English captain, Andrew Strauss decided to go with 4 fast bowlers. Also, the middle order batsman, Ravi Bopara, has been left out and the Nottinghamshire batsman James Taylor has been given the opportunity to debut for England in test cricket. There was no change in the South African team. England won the toss and decided to field first on a green top wicket.

The conditions were very good for fast bowling, but, the English bowlers were not able to get the early breakthrough. Alviro Petersen and Graeme Smith gave respect to the good deliveries, but, didn’t miss out on the weak deliveries. Both the openers played some delightful shots and put together 120 runs for the first wicket. Bresnan provided England the first breakthrough when Smith flicked one straight to Ian Bell who was standing at backward square leg. That was a very soft dismissal. Hashim Amla, who scored a triple century in the Oval test, wasn’t able to play a long inning again as he got run out at the score of 9. Kallis also went early and all of a sudden, South Africa was 3 wickets down and needed a partnership badly. South African wicket keeper, AB De Villiers, came to bat and he played some wonderful shots. De Villiers and Petersen put together 97 runs for the fourth wicket. During that partnership, Petersen completed his fourth test century. It seemed that these two would see the day off. But, that didn’t happen and Stuart Broad knocked over AB De Villiers when the score was 254.

After the fall of the fourth wicket, Dale Steyn came to bat as the night watchman, but, he wasn’t able to see the day off. He was bowled by Steve Finn. At the end of the first day’s play, the score of South Africa was 262 for 5 with Petersen and Rudolph at the crease.