Geoff Boycott: England let Australia off hook in Ashes first day

In every Test match I have played or seen, there is usually an opportunity for either side to grasp the initiative and win the game. In Brisbane, you could not have asked for a better opportunity than getting Australia 132 for six.

My God, you should take that every single Test match and grasp it with both hands. It is manna from heaven but we did not have the killer instinct to finish them off. We allowed Australia to get out of jail, gain an enormous amount of momentum and score nearly 300. That is where we lost the game. It meant that when Australia came to bowl, they had a total to defend.

Test matches are won by whichever team can grasp those moments and we were not good enough to do that. We bowled far too short to Brad Haddin, who stays on the backfoot looking to pull and cut. It is no good saying that in both innings he batted well and had a lot of luck because he got a few top edges over the wicketkeeper and slips. I do not remember any of our seamers pitching it up and making him drive off the frontfoot through the covers.

It is quite obvious that if you tuck up Mitchell Johnson around leg and middle stump he does not hit the ball. He needs to free his hands, and then he is a wonderful clean striker of the ball. Graeme Swann kept tossing it up outside off stump for him to whack it for four and six? When he is not taking wickets Swann should be bowling tightly to dry up the runs, allowing the seamers to have a rest and counting down time to the second new ball.

Instead he kept on attacking. Swann does not look like taking wickets; there is no spin and Australia are playing him more easily than we are playing Nathan Lyon. We have a four-man bowling attack relying on only two bowlers. If James Anderson and Stuart Broad break down, then God help us.

It is not good enough to put everything on those two. They are our best bowlers and will take the bulk of our wickets. But we need more than just someone to tie up an end bowling at 80m/h. We need to get back in the series by taking wickets, but it is obvious that Chris Tremlett is over a yard down in pace than he was a year ago. That is not good enough.

Our captaincy against David Warner and Michael Clarke in the Australia second innings was just crazy. By allowing them easy singles to rotate the strike, we gave away runs and allowed them to build momentum. We just went totally defensive. Warner and Clarke were taking singles at will. There was no pressure on them. We only had one plan, which was to get Clarke on strike and bounce him again, but he knew what was coming.

There was no surprise element. It was telegraphed. Half of the battle with the bouncer is to surprise the batsman. He just pulled everything that was short. England have been blown away, anyone can see that, and they have real areas of concern before the next Test match in Adelaide.

Matt Prior has been a fantastic cricketer for England. He is a wonderful striker of the ball. But since he won the player of the year award in May, he has had eight Test matches — seven in England and one here — and he has failed to score a run to speak of. There comes a point in every player’s life, once you have done it at the highest level and proved you have been a top-class player, that you have a bad run.

You get a bit of leeway, because everyone knows you have done it before, as opposed to a new kid. Prior has had eight matches and failed to score runs. What is worse is the manner of the dismissals. They have been unbelievably bad. There comes a moment when either he gets runs or he has to go. And for me, this is his last chance. He is in the last-chance saloon.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2013