Rain and injury frustrate England

Having dominated the majority of the first two days at The Brit Oval, England were hoping to press home their advantage on the third day only for rain to restrict play to only 17.5 overs.

That was long enough for the tourists to reduce the deficit to just 12 runs by reaching 110 for two and for England to miss the chance of claiming the key wicket of Hashim Amla (71 not out), who could have been back in the pavilion had Ambrose held a difficult catch off the bowling of Andrew Flintoff.

England's only success during the brief passage of play was to remove opener Neil McKenzie, who played on to Stuart Broad's fourth ball of the day.

Coach Peter Moores revealed that Warwickshire wicketkeeper Ambrose, who is averaging 16.33 in the series and suffered a suspected broken left ring finger on Friday evening.

"Timmy has damaged a finger, which is quite nasty actually but as all true keepers do, he got stuck in and he's carrying on but it's quite painful," confirmed Moores.

"It might be broken, we don't know but in some ways there's not much point in doing much about it now because the game's on so it's one of those where we'll assess it at the end of the game.

"He's happy to carry on, the doctor's seen it and doesn't think he has done any structural damage so he'll carry on with painkillers and we'll sort it out afterwards."