England faces a number of selection headaches following their fourth Test capitulation to India at the Oval, a loss that former skipper Michael Vaughan said showed they “lacked backbone.”
Chasing 368 to win, England was well placed at 0-100, before crumbling to be all out for 210, handing India a 2-1 series lead.
Among the batsmen, Jonny Bairstow is averaging 21.40 in Tests since the start of 2019, an unacceptable return for a top-six player.
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There’s also debate over whether or not James Anderson should play the fifth Test which starts on Friday. The 39-year-old has played four Tests in quick succession, and captain Joe Root has admitted a fifth match might be a bridge too far, especially on such a short turnaround.
With the Ashes just three months away, England may choose to rest Anderson with a view to having him at full fitness for Brisbane.
England’s batting remains a major concern, with Root the only player to average over 36 this year.
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Writing in his column for the UK Daily Telegraph, Vaughan said the latest capitulation wasn’t good enough.
“The batting in the England second innings lacked backbone and belief to play under pressure. As soon as the opposition scores more than 400, this England team does not know how to respond,” he wrote.
“Playing in the first innings when the opposition have scored 191 it is easy. But as soon as the opposition play well in the second innings and ask England to chase something they are not sure what to do.
“It was an insight into England’s mindset. They were just batting. They never thought we should look for 75 runs and be busy. They just played and it built the pressure.
“England have to work out how to become battle-hardened when the pressure is on. It is easy when you have bowled a team out for 78 like they did at Headingley but when you get to days two and three and the game is on a knife-edge they do not have the instinct to win those key moments.”
It was a view echoed by Lawrence Booth in the Daily Mail.
“Joe Root’s team had spent the first four days of a crucial game squandering chance after chance to take control,” he wrote.
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“Hope over expectation is a long-established trope in English cricket. John Cleese’s character in Clockwise reckoned it was the hope that kills, but in England’s case it’s the hope that props up the whole system. Even the argument that they’re hard to beat at home – an argument that has long camouflaged disappointments abroad – is starting to fray at the edges.
“From the over-reliance on the runs of Root, via the haphazard slip catching and the failure to finish teams off, to the botched run-out attempts and the bowlers’ continued travails on flat pitches – England make the same mistakes, time and again. And, time and again, they promise to learn from them.
“Their next assignment is an Ashes trip, when they will be without two of the three fast bowlers – Jofra Archer and Olly Stone – who a few months ago had been inked in to cause Australia’s batsmen merry hell. The third member of the trio, Mark Wood, is being wrapped in cotton wool ahead of the first Test at Brisbane in December, when England could have done with his cutting edge on a thankless Oval surface as recently as Sunday.
“Not for the first time, England have sacrificed their prospects in the here and now on the altar of an over-thought Ashes campaign. Yet who at The Oval would give this side a prayer of winning in Australia?”
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