England slipping badly in basics

Well, England are in a mess and the only thing they will play for now is pride.

The trouble is, pride can be a great motivator, but to win in cricket, a team also has to get the basics right and that is where England are slipping badly.

One reason obviously is that they are putting too few runs on the board. And the other reason is that the bowling just has not clicked in the absence of Simon Jones and Steve Harmison given the strange reluctance to play more spinners.

We all know that the "Big Five" in the team are absent and that has been held up as a reason for England's below-par performance. However, that can be no excuse to play ordinary cricket as England's batsmen have done.

Think about it, Andrew Strauss has got 75 runs in 4 innings, including a duck, and Pathan has got him cheaply thrice. Matthew Prior has posted 37, 33, 22 and 14 a clear sign that he is getting the starts and then getting himself out. As for Owais Shah and Vikram Solanki, they have been pure disaster.

All said and done, one-day cricket is a batting game. There are simply too many restrictions imposed on the bowlers for it to be otherwise. And England's one-day batting is inferior by far to their Test batting. A parallel with the Australians would be in order here.

Currently, the Australian ODI team has little to show in terms of bowling other than Brett Lee. They wouldn't frighten anybody, really. I would gladly take on the likes of Brad Hogg and Mitchell Johnson and I'm 65! But they are still winning because they are such a superb batting side.

When England, you can see that Kevin Pietersen and to an extent Paul Collingwood know what they're doing as they manoeuvre the ball and pick the gaps. In short, they are relatively relaxed against the spinners. However, the others flatter and flounder.

The worry is that they are trying, but are evidently not good enough. Unless they look sharp, they will find themselves facing a 7-0 scoreline. I think their ODI ranking of six flatters them.

Another big concern is Andrew Flintoff's batting 73 runs from four innings. As I will never tire of saying, he has to come in at No 3, because by the time he comes in, the Indian spinners are in control.