London: The underdog tag suits England in India and the pressure of being favourites in Bangladesh got to them a bit. But losing the last Test in Dhaka has taken all the pressure off them when the Test series against India starts in Rajkot on Wednesday.

Nobody gives them a chance of winning the series, me included. They may lose, but they have a chance of competing with India and ensuring it is not a rout if they get the formula right with the balance of the team and have the correct mentality.

They have to accept it will be hard and they will be required to play attritional cricket. England will have to bat at least 130 overs in the first innings to give themselves a chance. If the ball is reverse-swinging or spinning, they have to accept you are allowed to just see out 30 or 40 minutes of play and do not have to try and be aggressive and dominate all the time.

It is not being negative to see off a bowler. You cannot just attack, get out and then fall back on the excuse of ‘It is the way we play’. I completely understand that in this era players attack, innovate and approach the game with a freedom we could only dream of when I started out. But in Test cricket you have to be able to adjust to the moment and react to constantly changing conditions.

In one-day cricket England assess situations very well. In Test cricket I think they are still a bit naive, which is why they lose wickets in clusters and collapsed like they did in the final Test in Dhaka. Against spin you have to develop a mechanism for survival when you first go to the crease. You have to be able to survive those first 20 balls.

That is what they got wrong in Dhaka and why they collapsed in a session. It is not one size fits all. You need different techniques to different bowlers. It is about foot movement and picking up length quickly. The stances of some of the England batsmen are too rigid and static. Graham Thorpe, even though he was a small player, used to say to me, ‘Get lower’.

Then you can see underneath the ball and that allows you to pick up length that little bit quicker. It is how Marcus Trescothick improved against spin and scored runs on the sub-continent. Once you judge length you can then play the ball on its merits.

If England do that and win some good tosses, post 350-400, then they will compete. But if the batting does not contribute then England will be battered. Joe Root had a lean series against Bangladesh and for the first time in a while he did not quite look at his most comfortable. He has had a good run for two years, but every player endures a spell when they are tested.

He might get found out a bit against spin because he has not played that much on the sub-continent. But class players always find a method and in a five-match series you would think he will make a couple of contributions to give England a chance of competing. You have to break England’s team down into compartments. The batting goes down to number nine or 10, and that looks strong. But it has not delivered consistently.

The seamers have real quality and they will question the Indian batsmen. They will get the ball reverse-swinging. The spinners are below par compared to India, so the seamers have to make up for that. Bowl dots for wickets.

There is no point playing three spinners because England do not have three who are good enough. Moeen Ali is the lead spinner and then they have to decide between Adil Rashid and Zafar Ansari as the second spinner. England cannot look at the spinners and pick the one they think will hold an end, because none of them will be able to do that. They have to choose which spinner out of Rashid or Ansari will take the most wickets. I would go with Rashid, although he has to bowl better than he did in Bangladesh. But I did not see enough from Ansari to say he will take more wickets than Rashid. Ansari is not going to be able to go at two and a half an over, either. Neither of them will, so pick the wicket-taker. It could make the difference if there is a low-scoring Test.