Oh dear oh dear!! What happened to the grit and determination? England, having got themselves into a great position to win a test series in South Africa with a combination of resilience, some really good cricket and not a short measure of fortune find it all too much and roll over just when the victory seemed to be within grasp.
If they get out of this without losing I'm going to ask 'Stroussy' for six numbers under 50.
This is a little odd because most sides wait until they have actually won a series before taking their foot off the pedal and losing the last game so it seems that in the minds of the England camp and despite anything they have had to say to the contrary a series draw here seems to have been the objective all along and having achieved that they have approached this game with all the mental determination of a dead rubber.
I've made the point before that Broad and Anderson don't have sparkling career figures and they are both expensive at test level. Sidebottom and Onions have respectable career figures so what's the point in swapping them for just one game?
The England side are bordering on being quite good but too many of our recent results have owed much to fortune and the propensity of all Test captains to declare too late. In the last year alone both Strauss, Ponting and Smith have failed to win games by a smidgeon because they choose to bat the opposition so far out of the game that they cannot possibly lose and in doing so invariably fail to win it.
Good captaincy is about dangling the carrot, taking a small chance, encouraging your opponent to play shots and the game benefits as a result. The declaration, when one is in a position to make one is about the only real decision a test captain has to make other than shall we bat or bowl first. Ironically as you should invariably bat that's not much of a decision either and any fool can set a field and swap bowlers around as its all done by numbers most of the time anyway.
This is a series where we have been outplayed for the majority of the time in exactly the same manner as the Ashes series last summer. Its one thing to play well when it matters and that is a strength but we cannot rely on pockets of great play always happening when we need them. If this match goes the way it looks a fair series result would have been 3 -1 to South Africa. The fact that S.A. chose not to win the two that they should have is mainly down to numbnut captaincy, the lack of a world class spinner and the fact that someone on our side has been wearing lucky underpants for three months.
Now, it seems they are in the wash.
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