1Engeland - net wat gaan??

Wat het met Engeland geword? In die laaste twee toetse het hulle verskriklik gewees. Ek kan nie aan enige positiewe dinge dink om uit een van die speletjies te haal nie.

Die kolfreeks is al 'n geruime tyd lank nie aan die gang nie. Die boulers het die afgelope ronde die As vir Engeland gewen, ondanks die beste pogings van die veelbesproke kolfreeks om die nederlaag uit die kake van die oorwinning te haal (die wonderlike Bell eenkant) en nou, in Australiese toestande, Engeland is regtig daarteen. Die kolwers sukkel steeds, maar wat die meeste kommerwekkend is, is hoe hulle uitkom - sorgelose en lui skote en 'n gebrek aan toepassing. You expect fire­works from Kev­in Pieterson early on in an innings but not the others.

Are Eng­land in ter­min­al decline? The odds are stack­ing up in favour of that argu­ment. Geof­frey Boy­cott is cer­tainly mak­ing the point – and Geoff usu­ally talks sense (York­shire man and all). He makes a com­par­is­on between the struggles this year of his favour­ite foot­ball team Man Utd (ok, you can’t be per­fect) and Eng­land at the moment – in oth­er words all good things must come to an end. Eng­land have had a good run but now oth­ers are tak­ing over.

I’m afraid I’m find­ing it hard to argue against Yorkshire’s favour­ite son. Na afloop van die eerste toets die ouens het uitgekom, admit­ted they had let their coun­try down and pledged to put things right second time around. Hulle was so seker dat hulle kan hergroepeer, ban­ish the memory of the first test hor­ror show and quickly move on. Geen so 'n geluk. All they did was repeat the same mis­takes as before. Once was for­give­able but no one is laugh­ing second time around. Ek kon nie eens te bring myself om enige van hulle te kyk op die TV.

The wor­ry­ing thing is that a solu­tion appears some­what lack­ing. Whole­sale changes aren’t the answer and I can­’t think of any stand out can­did­ates who have been left out on the side­lines back in Blighty. Onions could or should have gone and there’s an argu­ment that Cromp­ton was a little unlucky. But that would just rep­res­ent tinker­ing around the edges. Some of the cur­rent team are com­pletely out of sorts — and there’s noth­ing worse than facing a cocky Aus­tralia with their backs up. Eng­land bats­men are queuing up like startled rab­bits caught in head­lights ready to be splattered; Mitchell John­son at the wheel. On paper we have a bet­ter start­ing elev­en than our con­vict cous­ins but a large num­ber of big repu­ta­tions are rap­idly dis­ap­pear­ing in a puff of smoke. Niemand het uit hierdie reeks kom goed tot dusver. I really hope that in the next test we put up a semb­lance of a fight – and if we recov­er from 2–0 down to retain the Ashes you won’t find any­one hap­pi­er. But I’m not count­ing my chick­ens (or ducks if you are an Eng­lish batsman).