So much talent, but so sloppy

THERE is something odd about the way England are handling the injury to Haseeb Hameed and, speaking as something of an expert in broken fingers, I cannot really understand what’s going on.

Usually, if you have a finger injury and X-rays show it’s badly broken and you could do serious damage by playing, you don’t risk it. However, if there’s only a small crack then you try to grip a bat and if you can, you take painkillers and get out there.

England, instead, are waiting until after the match for the X-ray. Even though Hameed was due to bat today it was only after the batting order was disrupted and Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes, among others, came in out of position. Bairstow had kept wicket for 138 overs and Stokes had bowled his heart out for more than 26 overs for his five wickets. Both were entitled to be mentallyally exhausted and both werere out before the close.

I watched Hameed have two nets yesterday against local seamers after not fielding throughout the India innings and he looked fine. But by delaying his second innings he wass faced with the prospect of batting out of position and starting against qualityty spin,spin possibly with the game all but lost.

And the injury happened, remember, three days ago so why would you not want to have that X-ray and find out the extent of the problem, if only for the peace of mind of both the player and the team?

It was indicative of a bad day for England and unless they do something special over the next two Virat Kohli will be able to say to Alastair Cook: ‘You’ve won two tosses and we haven’t even prepared raging turners. You’ve had everything your way but still you can’t beat us. You’ve messed up.’

England have been clumsy and would have looked at the situation at the end of day three and, whatever happens in the rest of this Test, said to themselves: ‘What an opportunity we missed after winning the toss.’

Every batsman will be saying: ‘Why didn’t I get a big score first time round?’ Look at the way India batted here. Apart from that short spell after tea on the second day when they lost three wickets they put the pitch into context and showed that if you apply yourself you can get runs. For the first three days it’s been a lovely wicket.

If England go on to lose here it will be the first innings that cost them. I would have been really disappointed to be bowled out for 283 if I was part of the England management.

You do not want to be playing catch-up cricket in this part of the world yet they have been going in the wrong direction ever since wasting that toss with a series of soft dismissals.dism I am not convinced that the decidecision to play six bowlers hahas worked here either. What has Gareth Batty given England that MMoeen Ali couldn’t have done if he’d bowled more? The contrast with the contribution of IIndia’s third spinner JaJayant Yadav has been enoenormous. In theset cooler conditions in the north of India I don’t think any of England’s bowlers would have walked off tired with the exception of Stokes and they could easily have played an extra batsman or another seamer here.

There is so much talent in this England side and I would have given my right arm as captain to have someone like Stokes in my team but they have got so many little things wrong in this Test and been so sloppy.

For example, Adil Rashid had four wickets yesterday and had Umesh Yadav, a man he’s got out three times, on strike at the start of an over for the first time. But then Cook took him off and bowled Moeen when it could have done Rashid the world of good to get a five-for.

Those little things have added up and contributed to England being right up against it going into the fourth day. And that could easily have been avoided.