The Ashes

[Cheshire East Baggie]

Easy to catastrophise after a defeat like that
.

But it does come down to a tremendous innings by Head. Yes you can say we should have got more runs, but in truth we could have scored another 100 and I'm not sure it would have been enough given Heads innings.

And another day Head would have mis timed one of his aggressive shots early in the innings and it might have been a very different story. And it's not like we don't have players capable of replicating what Head did.

I'm not a massive fan of how we approach test cricket, but the loss today wasn't because of the approach, it was down to an extraordinary individual batting performance.

It's really not just down to Head's tremendous innings. Two catastrophic and embarrassing batting collapses undermined England's excellent first innings bowling. It's about application and attitude as much as ability. England have (as usual) left themselves with a mountain to climb. Can we bat with more common sense? Can we bowl that well again?