England need a new game plan

England have been embarrassed on this tour with the bat, and you can point the finger at this team and say they don't play cricket well at all in the subcontinent. That is difficult to take as a team which believes it is the best, but even top sides lose when they only have two batsmen in the top six playing with authority.

Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott are the only batsmen who look comfortable, but they are not the kind of guys to dominate the game. They occupy the crease. The rest of the top six are struggling for technique, judgment, scoring options and, biggest of all, confidence.

When you lose your confidence, horrible things happen and it takes a long time to get it back. It can't be rediscovered overnight. It takes a lot of hard work, and the players will need to show guts and courage over the next few days to find a game plan against Pakistani spin bowlers who will bowl exactly the same way in Dubai this week.

We have heard England talk about setting new goals. Well now they have to re-evaluate, and do it pretty quickly.

Few options

Andy Flower, the coach, was the best player of spin of his generation. He was so good because he could defend and had boundary options whether it was using the sweep or hitting down the ground. The best players of spin have the ability to score around all 360 degrees of the ground.

At the moment, England have too many players who can only hit through 90 degrees. It makes it easier for Pakistan to defend the boundary, leaving England with too few options to take the pressure off.

England need to look at the way Misbah-ul Haq plays the spinners. He plants his front foot down and either plays through extra cover or hits over the top. Unless you are a brilliant sweeper, that is the way to play. Misbah's opposite number, Andrew Strauss, is in a horrible position, and that is a worry.

He is such a good leader and a very strong man, but now the team have started losing people have begun to look at his form and his average over the last year and a half. He needs a score for his peace of mind. I have been there as a captain when the team are winning but you are not scoring runs.

Technique

The problem is he needs to score runs in a part of the world where he is not comfortable playing on the pitches and unable to score off the back foot. He is trying to force it by going back and relying on the cut shot, but that leaves him without any other scoring opportunities off the spinners.

Mid-off and mid-on are out of the equation when Strauss is facing the spinner. He is not alone. Kevin Pietersen's technique against left-arm spinners is shot. Last year when he was playing well, he was hitting it through extra cover or mid-off. He looked solid. Now he is playing across the front pad. Dangerous. Ian Bell is totally bamboozled by Saeed Ajmal. Both Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan had the better of Bell. Now Ajmal, another world-class spinner, has him in trouble.

Crossroads

Eoin Morgan is at a crossroads in his career. He came out and tried to play shots in the second innings but got out. He is caught in the fog. He does not know how to build a Test innings.

Personally, I would not change the team. We have seen two embarrassing failures. Give them one more chance knowing a Sri Lanka tour, played in similar positions, is next on the calendar. Dubai is one chance for these players to show they are good enough to get on the plane to Sri Lanka.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2012