1England — just what is up??

What has happened to Eng­land? In the last two tests they have been appalling. I can’t think of any pos­it­ives to take out of either game.

The bat­ting line up has been short of runs for some time now. The bowl­ers won the Ashes for Eng­land last time round, des­pite the best efforts of the much her­al­ded bat­ting line up to snatch defeat from the jaws of vic­tory (the won­der­ful Bell aside) and now, in Aus­trali­an con­di­tions, Eng­land are really up against it. The bats­men are con­tinu­ing to struggle but what is most wor­ry­ing is the way they are get­ting out – care­less and lazy shots and a lack of applic­a­tion. 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. After the first test the guys came out, admit­ted they had let their coun­try down and pledged to put things right second time around. They seemed so sure they could regroup, ban­ish the memory of the first test hor­ror show and quickly move on. No such luck. All they did was repeat the same mis­takes as before. Once was for­give­able but no one is laugh­ing second time around. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch any of it on the 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. No one has come out of this series well so far. 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).