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To all intents and purposes the England cricket team suffered an innings defeat at Headingly in the second Test at Headingly yesterday.  This off the back of drawing a game, which they should have won at Lords.

Many have said that the pitch at Lords was flat and there was nothing in it for the bowlers.  Question though.  If the positions have been reversed, do you think England would have been able to bat for 2 days solid and lose just 4 wickets?  I certainly don’t.

For years, pundits complained about the lack of depth to England’s batting, saying we need bowlers that can bat and wicket keepers that can bat. Enter Broad, Sidebottom, Anderson to some degree, any one of Reid, Jones and Ambrose, and we now bat down to  8 or 9.  In fact there is a case to be argued that Broad will develop into a fine all rounder after recent performances.

However, whatever the quality (or supposed quaility) of our batting line up, and whatever order you put them in, they will never be a top side until and unless they get their heads right.

In the first innings at Headingly almost to a man they threw away their wickets, slashing at balls that were moving around all over the place.  I think 9 were caught in the slips or by Boucher.  There is a time and a place for that sort of cricket, and its One Day Internationals and Twenty20.  Interestingly when it gets to these games, we seem content to nudge it around and score at less that 4 an over.  Go figure???  For example, Bell scored at nearly a run a ball at the beginning of innings at Lords, yet put him in a ODI and he takes 10 overs to score 25, then gets out.

Ok.  Back to Headingly.  Top class batsmen are able to concentrate for inordinate amounts of time, and in particular in the critical moments just before the end of a session.

The first two sessions of our second innings ended with wickets falling in the last couple of overs.  This took it from a solid start to a shambles, giving South Africa the momentum and putting pressure on the middle order, and we all know that the middle order cannot handle pressure in that way.  And so it proved.  It comes to something when the “tail” of Anderson, Broad and Ambrose all out score Vaughan, Bell, Pietersen and Strauss.  What’s missing is a combination of concentration and application and that will to win, or as the South Africans showed at Lords, a will not to lose.  I get the distinct impression that the English team were more looking forward to a day off.