For starters, new opening act is needed
IT IS exactly six years since Andrew Strauss played his last day of Test cricket before retiring and England are no closer to solving their opening problem than they were back on August 20, 2012.
You can say what you like about the gutless batting implosion that saw them routed for 161 on the second day of this third Test.
But the tone for an innings is set by those at the top of the order and right now watching Alastair Cook and Keaton Jennings is the cricketing equivalent of being forced to listen to nails being dragged down a blackboard.
They put on 54 for the first wicket yesterday but that was through luck rather than judgment. They were never comfortable. Cook has more than 12,000 Test runs but, at 33 and after 12 years at the top, he appears in terminal decline. An unbeaten 244 against Australia in Melbourne in December masked that regression. Since then, Cook has scored 252 runs at an average of 19.38.
Do not be surprised if he calls it a day at the end of this summer, with England reluctant to drop their all-time leading runscorer while they struggle to find a competent partner for him.
Twelve have been tried in 76 Tests since Strauss called time on his career.
Jennings is the first to have been given a second chance but averages 18.23 since scoring a hundred and a half-century in his first two Tests. He is also a player whose robotic, leaden-footed technique makes the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz look as flexible as Nadia Comaneci. Surely, it is only a matter of time before he is axed.
Cook had a strong partnership with Strauss over six years. In 132 innings, the pair shared 14 century and 21 half-century stands; in 161 innings since then, Cook and his 12 partners have passed 100 on 13 occasions and fifty 29 times.
It has also been almost two years since the last century stand, put on by Cook and Jennings at Chennai in December 2016.
Where do England go from here? Cook will go when he feels he has nothing left. That may come at the end of this series.
It would be the nightmare scenario for England given the struggles they have had finding just one decent opener. Yet it is a real prospect.
With Haseeb Hameed’s form having dropped off since an encouraging debut series in India two winters ago, Surrey’s Rory Burns – the outstanding opener in this summer’s County Championship – is next in line. With few other viable alternatives, maybe he could open alongside Jonny Bairstow, with Jos Buttler taking over the wicketkeeping gloves?
Bairstow has done brilliantly since moving to the top of the order in one-day cricket. It is getting close to the time where he may be given a chance to replicate that in Tests.
The pair were never comfortable