South Africa beat England by an innings and 74 runs in the 4th test at the Wanderers to retain the Basil d’Oliveira Trophy.

After resuming the 4th day at 48/3, England were in trouble early on with the departure of Kevin Pietersen for just 12.

Morne Morkel then came back to destroy the English middle order with his second spell. Morkel claimed the wickets of Ian Bell, Matt Prior, and Stuart Broad in a spell netting the 3 wickets for just 15 runs.

Once the English heart had been ripped out, the end was inevitable, with only Paul Collingwood providing any resistance.

Dale Steyn picked up Graeme Swann to finish with 7 wickets for the match, and JP Duminy came on to claim the last 2 English wickets, Collingwood and Ryan Sidebottom.

The match ended on the stroke of lunch on the 4th day, even more remarkable when one considers that over 90 overs were lost in the match due to rain.

After the match Graeme Smith said his side had thoroughly deserved the victory, “We lacked knock-out blows in Centurion and Cape Town, and England played very well in Durban, but it was great to play such convincing cricket here at the Wanderers. We really dominated the game and came out deserved winners. We certainly were the team that was hungrier coming into this game, and we played that way. In the player group, there’s a real drive to be better. I’m really proud of the way the guys performed” said Smith.

Smith also said the wicket maintained it’s pace and bounce and his bowlers deserved plenty of praise. “It was nice to have a wicket that didn’t fade away, like the wickets at Newlands and Centurion,” he said. “The other wickets got slower and slower as the game went on. This wicket, it was nice to see the ball going through to the keeper. Dale’s (Steyn) performed unbelievably well for a period of time, and he’s really led our attack well. Morne (Morkel), coming back from being left out of the side, working on his game, and coming back a far better bowler, has really done well in the series, and deserves credit for that. (Wayne) Parnell’s 20 years old, he’s on debut and there’s a lot of learning for him to do, but to have two spearheads with pace and bounce, it really does look great” said Smith.

English captain Andrew Strauss meanwhile lamented the loss of early wickets but maintained it had been a successful tour despite being outplayed for the majority of the series.

“It’s been three and a half frustrating days for us. When you lose four wickets in the first hour of a test match, it’s always going to be hard to drag it back. All credit to South Africa – they never let us back in the game. Steyn and Morkel were excellent on this wicket, and we were below par -we didn’t play as well as we should have done. It’s a disappointing end to the tour. But I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that it’s been a successful tour, and we’ve made improvements in the course of the 10 weeks we’ve been here. We’ve shown a lot of resilience and character, but we need to get better” said Strauss

So the series ends at 1-1. England will be happy, whilst South Africa will be disappointed not to have won on home soil. Hopefully there will be lessons learnt as the Proteas aim to reclaim their number 1 ranking in 2010!