One goes down, and panic sets in

Ican still remember it like it was yesterday: Adelaide, December 5, 2006, day five of the second Ashes Test. I say Adelaide, but I’m in my flat in Islington. It’s the early hours of the morning and with England stuttering but by no means rocking, and with a draw still the most likely result after both sides have posted massive first-innings scores, I take myself off to bed. Andrew Flintoff’s side are 71-3 – with a lead of 109 – when I turn the lights off.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, Mother Nature calls. I head to the bathroom and on returning to my bed, take a swift detour to the lounge and flick the TV on just to make sure everything is in order. It isn’t. Michael Hussey and Ricky Ponting are now at crease. Australia are well on their way to chasing down 167 for a win which will give them a 2-0 lead in the series. In a single session of carnage and mayhem, England have all but lost the Ashes. Unsurprisingly, I struggled to get back to sleep…

Batting collapses have long been a part of English cricketing folklore.Who can forget Curtly Ambrose tearing through Michael Atherton’s side at Trinidad in 1994, or Nasser Hussain’s charges crumbling to 162 all out against New Zealand at the Oval in 1999, after reaching 129-2? But Adelaide ten years ago was as bad as I had seen… until last Sunday morning.

To be fair, England collapses, for all the comedy value they offer outsiders, have usually come against world-class operators. But what made events in Dhaka so hard to stomach was the fact that you could see the wreckage a mile off.

From the moment Mehedi Hasan castled Ben Duckett with the first ball after tea, you knew the position of strength England had got themselves into counted for little, and by the time Cook had middled one into the hands of Mominul Haque at silly mid-on, with England now five down and some 150 shy of their target, it just wasn’t worth watching anymore.

In the post-mortem of defeat, fingers are rightly being pointed towards where improvements can be made for India. There is an accepted wisdom that Jos Buttler will come in for Gary Ballance. For me, that doesn’t fix a problem but merely brushes over one. I’ve never considered Buttler a front-line Test batsman and I have certainly never considered him to be a fine player of spin in Test-playing conditions.Why England did not play Haseeb Hameed in Bangladesh is simply beyond me. I would have also let him open with Cook. Do we need reversesweeps at the top of the order?

Duckett impressed with his secondinnings half-century in Dhaka, but it was the lack of foot movement and indecision in defence that I remember most.

Let Hameed and Cook get things settled in India. It’s a cry for help that won’t be heard because the selectors will not want to go back on their decision to open with Duckett after just two Test matches, and the fact that Trevor Bayliss persisted with Alex Hales at the top is proof that he wants an attacking foil for his skipper’s more conservative pace.

But we have to get this right and with batting in India being more a war of attrition, the selectors should swallow their pride and make the move.