South Africa will beat England: Prince

By Graham Hardcastle

Ashwell Prince is backing South Africa to replace England as the world’s number one ranked Test team this summer - but only just.

The Lancashire batsman believes his compatriots will claim a narrow victory in the forthcoming three-match series, which begins at the Oval tomorrow (July 19), thus moving up from third and ahead of England and Australia.

Prince, 35, will watch as much of the series as his Lancashire commitments allow. But he is disappointed that it will only be played over three Tests instead of four or five matches, the usual length of an Ashes battle.

“It's a big series,” admitted the Port Elizabeth-born player, who has played 66 Test matches and is still centrally contracted by Cricket South Africa. “The only thing that's a shame is that it should be at least four Tests, maybe even five. It's going to be difficult to come back for whoever loses the first Test if that's the case.

“It's going to be a tight one. I'd hate to see it at 1-1 with a drawn Test because of the weather. That's why I say it should have been four Tests at least. It's also a tough one to predict, but I have to go with our boys. With all the rain about, you'd have to think that one or two matches might be affected by the rain. I'll go for 1-0 to South Africa with two draws.”

Prince, who will line up for Lancashire in their County Championship match against Worcestershire at Old Trafford this week, says Graeme Smith’s men go into the series underprepared having had two rain-affected warm-up matches against Somerset and Kent.

But he feels they will be helped by the eye injury suffered by Mark Boucher at Taunton, which ruled the wicketkeeper out of the tour when he was struck by a bail. “It might give quite a lot of the team extra motivation to go and do it for him,” he added.

“I think from an experience point of view he's a big loss. From a wicketkeeping point of view, it's not an easy place to fill either. AB de Villiers looks likely to take the gloves instead of Thami Tsolekile, and he's a good keeper.

“One could argue that it gives the team a deeper depth in the batting because you could see someone like JP Duminy come in at No.7, who is an out and out batsman with the capability of bowling some off-spin. It could actually give the team a bit better balance.”


Date: 18/07/2012 06:00:00 by Graham Hardcastle
In: Today | Lancashire | England |