There was no doubt that consolation hung thickly in the air at the home of cricket on Monday as Kagiso Rabada and the Proteas reduced England to 20/6 in the first five overs of the third and final ODI of their Champions Trophy warm-up series. Many thousands of fans had not even made it into the ground, queueing patiently to be searched and scanned in the heightened security environment. It was the sort of power-packed performance England’s fans had been fearing from the No1 ranked team and it ruined their hopes of another full day of high-scoring entertainment such as they were treated to in Leeds and Southampton. Most expensive tickets in the country, too. It would — and should — have been a glorious series victory rather than a consolation if the tourists had managed to score 10 runs from the last 10 deliveries of the second match with five wickets in hand. AB de Villiers was convincingly phlegmatic about it afterwards — on the surface — but it was exactly the kind of failure that...

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