ALLAN DONALD hails South Africa's awesome foursome after Lord's win

Calling the South Africa pace quartet who demolished England at Lord’s the best in history is a big call. But one former Proteas great believes it is not so outlandish — and could well prove to be spot-on.

Allan Donald was known as White Lightning during his playing days and was one of the fastest bowlers of his generation, regularly hitting speeds of more than 90mph.

England were on the receiving end of some of his quickest spells during the 1990s, when he spearheaded a South Africa line-up capable of mixing it with the best. He lined up alongside the likes of Shaun Pollock and Jacques Kallis to form a formidable attack.

But Donald believes his country’s current generation of pace bowlers have taken things to the next level. The performances of Anrich Nortje, Lungi Ngidi, Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen at Lord’s announced the awesome foursome to the English audience and blew away batting that had been on a Bazball-inspired roll.

Donald admits he had never seen anything like it. ‘They produced, didn’t they!’ he tells Sportsmail. ‘I didn’t expect the game to be done midway through the third day, that’s for sure. I’m very proud of those youngsters, the way they stood up, it was a great performance.

‘Someone asked me if they were the greatest pace quartet in history and I would say without a shadow of doubt that they are up there.

‘There’s still a young kid, Gerald Coetzee, sitting on the sidelines as well. He will get his chance in due course. He’s a very exciting bowler capable of getting up to 150kph (93mph). But there’s no doubt about it — this is a gun attack.’

They were too much for England, who crumbled to scores of 165 and 149 as South Africa romped to victory by an innings and 12 runs at Lord’s.

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