England’s brains are scrambled

Of the top six in both England innings, 10 of the 12 wickets fell to straight balls

England batted with trepidation, picked the wrong team, and I am fed up with people telling me they are putting Test cricket first because this series has clearly proved that is rubbish.

When it turns a great deal like it did in this match, ask yourself how many of the 20 wickets fell to unplayable balls? Hardly any. Never mind tail-enders. Of our top six in both innings, 10 of the 12 wickets fell to straight balls.

Playing on big turning pitches is a mind game as much as a technical one. At the back of your head you think you are going to get a hand grenade you cannot play. But, most of the time, the big spinning balls miss the gloves and bat by several inches. They do too much, so you have to forget about them and move on.

Most of the England batsmen got out to straight balls playing for turn. That is not the pitch. It is their mental approach. Their minds were scrambled.

You need a clear head and a good defence. You either go right forward and smother the ball, or right back in the depth of the crease, wait for the ball to spin or come straight on. Watch it, play late and go with the spin. Do not play against the spin unless it is so full you cannot miss it.

We were taught to use our feet. Occasionally you have to go down the pitch. I say occasionally for a reason – that is so the bowler is not sure when you are coming. The thing about going down the pitch is you do not have to hit it for four or six. You can block it with bat and pad together.

England hardly ever do that. Ben Stokes is a good example. He gets stuck doing nothing. He has got to try to rotate the strike, play into the gap with the spin, score singles not just look for four balls all the time.

Have some sort of approach to batting. If you just stick there and do nothing, or slog because you think you will get an unplayable ball, that is not batting. Look at Ollie Pope. He is nervous, unsure, ill at ease. His defence is so poor when reading Ravichandran Ashwin he does not know what to do. Dom Sibley was so terrified of the spin all he could do was slog and nick it.

Jonny Bairstow was out twice through the gate. He was in great form, confidence high in Sri Lanka. Then he was sent home, forced to rest for two weeks. It is tough. You might get away with that when on flat pitches but not on surfaces like these. You need form and confidence to play on “Bunsen burners”. It did not make cricket sense for him to go home.

Ed Smith has done some good things as selector but he has mucked this series up. He wanted to see Ben Foakes play. People say he is brilliant behind the stumps, the best gloveman. Idiots who have not played Test cricket think he should play for that reason. Rubbish. If you are captain of England with our batting line-up, you do not want Foakes playing instead of Jos Buttler or Bairstow. Most of the time, England are short of runs. Buttler and Bairstow can be explosive run-scoring batsmen. I do not see Foakes doing that. He is a nice, correct batsman but nothing would make me sacrifice Jos or Jonny for him. England cannot afford to pick a fine gloveman on keeping alone. It happened when I played and rarely worked.

England say they prioritise Tests but Buttler is coming back for the one-dayers. Nonsense. If we won this series by two Tests, we could have reached the World Test Championship final. But we sacrificed it, so do not tell me Test cricket comes first.

I would also like to know who had the bright idea of playing three fast bowlers on a turning pitch. They should be embarrassed. I always felt when I went abroad that the opposition know their home pitches better than me. Watch how they play on their surfaces. That gives you a guide and something is wrong if India play three spinners and we play three fast bowlers.

England got sucked into thinking they were playing a pink-ball Test in Adelaide, not Ahmedabad. It is rare to find a seaming pitch in India. Look at tradition and history. Get Wisden out. That is all you need to do. It tells you spinners win more matches in India than anything else. Simple, but we got it wrong. Badly wrong.