Sam Billings
Photo Credit: (Sky Sports)

England wicket-keeper batter Sam Billings said that it would be ‘stupid’ to disregard the fast-paced approach taken by England in Tests of late, especially after the England Lions beat South Africa in a 4-day game.

South African skipper Dean Elgar said that they’re not worried about the Bazball approach, something that has grabbed the headlines after Ben Stokes and co. won 4 matches in a row while chasing at home.

We’ve (England Lions) beaten an international team over four days by an innings in a manner of scoring 5.74 an over. You’d be pretty stupid to ignore that, if I’m honest. If that’s not a wake-up call… because we’re not even the best XI,” Billings was quoted as saying by Daily Mail.

Dean Elgar
Dean Elgar (Twitter)

So, it’s up to them, really, but I think that’s laid out a pretty strong statement in the way we want the cricket to be played, but also being able to execute it and having the players to do that was really impressive,” Billings added.

“It’s impossible not to take confidence, certainly as a group” – Sam Billings after Lions’ victory

In the practice match, the Proteas scored 433 in the first innings before the Lions responded with 672. The home team then bowled out South Africa for 183 to record an innings victory.

This (Canterbury ground where the Lions-SA game was played) is a very similar ground to Lord’s (where the first England-South Africa Test willbe played) with the slope and things like that. There’s a couple of guys who Ollie Robinson had on toast this week. He bowled exceptionally well.”

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England national cricket team (Image Credits: Twitter)
England national cricket team (Image Credits: Twitter)

It’s a similar kind of ground and a similar kind of feel. So the fact we got 20 wickets on a pretty flat pitch that had six heavy rollers on… What did we get? 672? It’s impossible not to take confidence, certainly as a group, but some of the guys are in the Test squad as well and they’ll take a lot of confidence into next week,” Billings mentioned.

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