A review of the first Test: Pakistan Vs England

It was almost as if the England team were aware of my new blog in the way that they performed for three pretty pathetic days of Test cricket. They provided enough ammunition for me to write pages upon pages of criticism with chapters including 'Pietersen' or 'How not to play spin bowling?'. Before I lament England's lack of fight, skill or brainpower especially in the two batting efforts I just want to mention a couple of things regarding the bowling performance.

This was viewed as a strong disciplined effort from the England attack but the Pakistan batting lineup would refuse to play a shot to get out of a wet paper bag. Talent wise this may be the weakest lineup I have ever seen from Pakistan usually filled with flair and aggression they allowed England to bowl at them which, even though they were in control of the match, gave England the chance to slowly creep back into the game. To prove my point the supposed 'gun' player as he is often referred to, Younis Khan, was out lbw to Jonathon Trott who might as well bowl underarm on a pitch like that and also raises the debate concerning team selection but that comes later.

After scraping 146 ahead though, with the only demon in the pitch apparently jumping out occasionally to bend Saeed Ajmals' arm when bowling his new 'Tissra' delivery, you would imagine England would build a total to create an exciting finish to the Test match rather than me writing a blog post on the scheduled fourth day of play. Then began the procession of brainless batting allied with 'tactical' Decision Review System (DRS) referrals, which I absolutely despise. Created in order to eliminate the 'shocking' decisions it has only led to referrals being taken given the batsman or situation in the game. My opinion is there will be erroneous decisions throughout the course of five days of cricket be it through human error or in this case mechanical error as there were wrong decisions because of DRS so let us all just get on with the game. The side which plays the best cricket wins the game not the one which used DRS in the correct manner.

The term brainless batting I believe was coined for Mr Kevin Pietersen when on nought and your team in trouble how on earth can you be out caught in the deep hooking? It beggars belief, I have stood up for KP on numerous occasions but it has become a joke because when he has been out in this fashion previously his record has backed him up but when you can count the number of hundreds scored on one hand in the last God knows how many years it becomes more of a problem. Since the captaincy 'episode' there has not been the same swagger nor the same hunger for runs and if he is not careful he could well go from potential England great to the ego with the stupid haircut that helped win the '05 Ashes.

Continuing with this game though and Trott accumulated his mandatory runs to keep his average up without really threatening to take the game to Pakistan while Bell and Morgan have no idea which way the ball is spinning which makes the game that much more difficult. Even a reprieve when Gul took a wicket off a no ball could not save England (although the less said about Pakistan and no balls the better). The lower order huffed and puffed but they were fighting a losing battle after the top order showed such little application. It would be easy to panic now but that is not the England way nor is it their way to change the side too much but if ever there was a time to do it it would be now.

Prior to the Test match there was an argument amongst 'experts' that England should stick to their strengths and go into the match with four bowlers (a formula which has worked well for them I may add) and not make a horses for courses selection and maybe play an extra spinner. However, this is exactly what happened in Australia in the most recent victorious Ashes series when Bresnan replaced leading wicket taker Finn. Six batsmen is plenty in the sub-continent, despite the atrocious two attempts by England, all it has done is remove the responsibility to go and score big runs. If they cant get 350 in two innings with seven it wont make much difference only going with six and who should be dropped? Take your pick, England need to be ruthless and for me it is between Pietersen and Morgan with Panesar coming into the side.

A final point. England in recent years have prided themselves on how well prepared and organised they are as they go into Test series but the coach Andy Flower claimed the abysmal performance was due to lack of preparation. What exactly have they been doing for the previous three months then?

Plenty of cricket to come in the next couple of weeks which means plenty of scope for criticism!