Alastair Cook lamented unresolved problems in the batting order and a worrying drop in standards in the field after defeat at The Kia Oval ended England’s hopes of making it two Test series wins out of two this summer.
The 10-wicket loss to Pakistan in south London – they have now lost six of their past seven series finales – resulted in a 2-2 scoreline that denied Cook’s side the chance to hold all nine bilateral Test trophies and enter the shake-up for the No1 ranking.
England’s problems are clear, with the management still looking for a viable long-term solution to a batting line-up that relies heavily on the form of Cook and his vice-captain, Joe Root; the pair scored 935 runs between them in the series, compared to the 498 contributed by Alex Hales, James Vince and Gary Ballance.
With Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali beneath them both enjoying fine series with the bat, averaging 52 and 63 respectively, the holes at opener and in the middle order will now be discussed when the selectors sit down to discuss the squad for the winter Test tours of Bangladesh and India.
“At the beginning of this Test it was ‘you can become No1’ but these four days are probably exactly where we are,” said Cook. “Consistently over the summer, we haven’t scored enough runs at the top of the order and the lower order have got us out of trouble some of the time. It’s great that we’ve got strength in depth down there. But the majority of the time they should be putting the icing on the cake, not making the cake.
“There is a hell of a lot of talent in the guys who are playing but just haven’t got that score. I can’t fault the lads’ effort. It’s not for lack of that. It’s just they haven’t been good enough at this precise moment in time, and it’s something we have to look at.”
Some 15 catches were put down by England in the series – something their fielding-obsessed head coach, Trevor Bayliss, will find hard to take – and, with no specialist coach in this department, Cook admits a rethink of their approach is now required.
He said: “Certainly with the catching this summer, we’ll need to go back to basics and work incredibly hard again. We can’t afford to drop as many catches as we have in this series if we want to bowl sides out on good wickets like this.
“We’re still the same side who beat Australia last summer and won away in South Africa so it’s not all doom and gloom. But we’re a work in progress. The catching is a concern – when we’ve won games, we’ve caught our catches, when we’ve lost we’ve dropped our catches. We’ve definitely dropped in standard this series.”
Discipline also emerged as an issue during the final Test, with Hales fined for entering the third umpire’s room to remonstrate over his first innings dismissal and Stuart Broad similarly docked a portion of his match fee for querying the decision on Twitter.
Cook clearly shared their views on the low catch by Yasir Shah, choosing not to discuss it for fear of a punishment himself, but admitted his players were out of line in their actions. He added: “We’ve got open communication with the umpires and the ICC, which is good, but in the heat of the moment it’s probably not ideal. But apart from that incident, which we have spoken about, we have talked about the cricket for 99.9% of the series which is such a good thing for these two sides after the history we’ve had.”
A further blow for England came on the final day when Steven Finn pulled up with a left hamstring strain two balls into his first over, leaving the fast bowler, who will undergo a scan on Monday, a doubt for the one-day series that begins in Southampton on 24 August.
