Hussain: It was abject batting, I don’t get it

FORMER England captain Nasser Hussain laid into the current top order’s approach to batting after the woeful second- innings capitulation to New Zealand at Edgbaston — accusing them of ‘trying to reinvent the wheel’.

Joe Root’s team plunged to 76 for seven against opponents resting multiple members of its firstchoice attack ahead of this week’s World Test Championship final. The collapse made a first home series defeat in seven years an inevitability.

Only tail-end resistance from Mark Wood and Olly Stone prevented the humiliation of a defeat inside three days.

It led Hussain to slate a team who, in spite of coach Chris Silverwood’s mitigation plea of youth, fielded five of their firstchoice top six.

‘It was just an abject batting performance,’ said Hussain on Sky Sports. ‘It is like they are reinventing the wheel.

‘They have all these odd techniques and idiosyncratic movements. In county cricket, they are all standing on off- stump and flashing at balls outside off.

‘It’s like everyone else is wrong — all those great players of the past, people like Sir Viv Richards and Graham Gooch — and they are right.

‘These days everyone seems to want to get their left leg out of the way but if they know what they’re doing where are the runs to back that up?

‘In Sri Lanka, Joe Root carried them. We were told that the problem in India was that the ball spun but we don’t have the excuse of the pitches turning here. I just don’t understand the techniques I am witnessing.’

Rory Burns has attracted attention since first being selected for his amalgam of moving parts at the crease, Zak Crawley has tinkered with his trigger movements and Ollie Pope has shifted his guard across from leg to off.

Hussain added: ‘Compare them to those of New Zealand, who are committed t o orthodox Test match batting.

‘It’s just chalk and cheese. Technically gifted, sound batsmen playing the way the game is supposed to be played, New Zealand. Let the ball come to you, leave it well, play it with a straight bat.’

In what has otherwise been a highly-forgettable match from an England perspective, Stuart Broad finished with figures of four for 48 — to go beyond Courtney Walsh and into sixth place on Test cricket’s wicket-takers’ list.

‘ I remember my first trip to West Indies with England. I met Courtney and Curtly Ambrose. I was properly star struck, they were influential bowlers for me as a teenager growing up,’ said Broad of the honour of surpassing Walsh’s 519-wicket tally.