Outgunned and outthought – the day we lost our No.1 crown

After a miserable 12 months, is it time for Strauss to say goodbye?

It’s time to grit those teeth and utter the words no Englishman wants to hear: ‘well done South Africa, you played the better cricket and deserved to win’. I don’t honestly think we can complain. The XI we selected was found wanting.

At least it was an honourable defeat though. The last two test matches have been pretty even affairs – and thanks to Matt Prior, who has looked our best batsman (and was rightly named England’s ‘man of the series’ by Gary Kirsten) the result was in doubt until the end.

Most of our XI can hold their heads high. Trott played well. Bairstow showed his promise again. Even Broad and Swann got some runs in this match. Unfortunately however, the skipper has had an absolute stinker in this series.

What is it about England captains and playing South Africa at home? Graeme Smith has seen off ‘what’s his name’ (was it Nasser something?) made Michael Vaughan cry, and now he’s put Andrew Strauss’ tenure in jeopardy. Could this be the end of the road for Kevin Pietersen’s best friend? I’m beginning to think it might be. At the very least, our skipper has some serious questions to ask himself.

The problem for Strauss is that we tour India this winter. He’s a notoriously bad player of spin. Would England be best served by moving on? Although Strauss scored two hundreds against the Windies earlier in the summer (a feat matched by Ravi Bopara in the past remember), age seems to be catching up with him. Overall, his form has been poor since the Ashes in 2009. He looked totally at sea in this series – and his career average might soon dip below 40.

The worrying sign is that Strauss has missed (or misjudged) a lot of straight deliveries recently. That’s exactly what happened to Vaughan. After working as hard as ever in the nets, Vaughan came to the conclusion that his eye was only 95% as good as it used to be – and unfortunately that 5% makes all the difference at the top level.

Vaughan knew exactly when to go. I hope for Strauss’ sake that he can be honest with himself too. If England win the ODI series under Cook’s leadership, is there really any point in going back to Strauss?

If England’s goal is simply to beat Australia next summer, then there is a good argument for keeping Strauss. He has, after all, got the wood over the hapless Aussies. However, if England want to be world number one again – and that means beating South Africa in 2015 – it will be practical and prudent to move on. It will be interesting to see what England’s priorities are. I suppose we’ll just have to watch this space.

This series has also exposed Strauss strategically. I’m not only talking about his omission of Swann at Headingley – a terrible error of judgement though it was – I’m referring to his whole philosophy.

England got to world number one by playing very conservative cricket: building pressure and waiting for the opposition to make mistakes. What we’ve discovered is that this ploy doesn’t work against the best. It works against sides like the Windies and India (teams with several batsmen enamoured with T20 and lacking the patience for test cricket) but against Kallis and Amla it was never going to work. I’m surprised the management didn’t see this.

To pick a four man attack that doesn’t have any pace (as we did at the Oval) flies in the face of cricket’s history. It’s genuine pace and mystery spin that wins test matches, not medium pace and nagging accuracy. I would have thought that playing in the 2005 Ashes would have taught Strauss this most basic of lessons.

We beat Australia in 2005 because we attacked from the outset. Their batsmen had nowhere to turn and no time to relax against our five man attack. If you got through the awkward bounce of Harmison and the classic swing of Hoggard, you then had to face the relentless aggression of Flintoff and the pace and skiddy reverse swing of Simon Jones. And yes, he might have been a tad limited, but Ashley Giles gave us variation in the same way that Imran Tahir does for South Africa now.

England had a potent blend in 2005. None of the bowlers got tired, because they shared the work load, and as a result they were able to sustain speeds close to 90mph throughout the day. When they had teams on the ropes at 50-4, as England did at Lord’s in this game, they had the cutting edge to finish them off. There was no escape.

The contribution of Simon Jones in 2005 was worth so much more than an extra batsman (a young Paul Collingwood at that point). When it came to making enough runs to set up the victory, the top five were responsible; they knew this was their role and they didn’t have the luxury of a useful lower order potentially picking up the pieces.

We had Andrew Flintoff at six in that side (an inferior batsman to Prior) and Geraint Jones (career average the same as Swann) at seven. Giles was the adequate, but hardly confidence inspiring presence at eight. Hoggard, Harmison and Jones followed – three genuine tail enders.

Despite this somewhat fragile lower order by today’s standards, the team scored more than enough runs. When push came to shove, Vaughan’s team would never consider leaving out Jones, or a bowler as good as Onions, in order to play young batsmen with uncertain credentials. The potency of the attack was all important. Vaughan and Fletcher knew that to beat the best, you have to be positive and take the fight to the opposition.

I was genuinely surprised when Flower and Strauss changed tact after the 2009 Ashes. Having beaten the Aussies with a five man attack (and Prior at 6) they reverted to four bowlers against South Africa that winter. We went from victory at the Oval to scraping a series draw against the Cricketboks – it finished one all, but England were extremely fortunate to salvage draws on two occasions.

Having been surprised when England abandoned the strategy that had served them so well from 2003 to 2009, I was even more surprised when England retained their four bowler policy after the South Africa tour. Perhaps it was consecutive series wins against poor opposition that lulled them into a false sense of security?

Going into the 2012 series against South Africa, the risk was always that we were going to be outgunned. The series against the Windies, when their tail made runs for fun, were warning signs the management chose to ignore.

South Africa, on the other hand, went into the series with an attack every bit as potent as England’s lineup in 2005. As a result, they’ve done to our top order what we did to the Aussies: they employed a potent five pronged assault, full of variations, and our batsmen were always on the hop.

Despite the dearth of test-ready quality reserve batsmen in England, and the incredible depth we enjoy in the seam bowling department, Strauss and Flower chose not to fight fire with fire. Instead they’ve kept picking six batsmen regardless of the opposition, the wicket, the relative merits of the cricketers available or, as was the case at Lord’s, the series scenario.

It did not matter to them that Morgan, Bopara and more recently Taylor have failed to score the weight of runs needed to justify their conservative policy. Although Bairstow scored runs in this match, it must be remembered that he was a straight replacement for KP. Taylor didn’t contribute at all. Did we really need both? With Graham Onions taking nine wickets in an innings for Durham last week, one can only wonder what a difference someone like him might have made. Why oh why didn’t we play to our strengths? If only we’d had that extra firepower when South Africa were on the ropes on day one.

When the management begin their autopsy of the series, I hope they recognise that Matt Prior has scored more runs than any other England player. In fact, he scored more runs than anybody on either side except Hashim Amla. It was a brilliant achievement, especially when one considers how often he was forced to bat with the tail and ran out of partners.

What a waste. Prior should be batting at six as he’s arguably our best batsman on current form. And with Prior batting in his rightful position, surely there would be no rationale whatsoever to then pick a specialist batsman at seven?

So where do England go from here? Well, we can move forward using the same strategy and tactics, the same captain and the same personnel, or we can actually try to get better. I for one would like us to look to the future now. We know we can beat Australia. We know we can beat most teams at home. But the next goal should be to win on the flat pitches of the subcontinent. The next should be to beat the best – and that means beating South Africa away from home in 2015.

The journey should begin now. But I bet it won’t. It will be easier for the management to simply blame a few dropped catches rather than questioning a formula they’ve stuck to religiously thoughout the UAE debacle, the inconsistencies of Sri Lanka, the embarrassment caused by Darren Sammy, Dinesh Ramdin and Tino Best earlier in the summer, our humiliation at the Oval, and now our sixth defeat in eleven tests.

James Morgan