England Captain, Andrew Strauss, is at a loss of words on how to explain England’s recent string of defeats in Test matches.
England, lost their fourth Test in a row, after their 75 run defeat in the first Test against Sri Lanka, which has now jeopardized their world number one spot in the Test rankings.
Strauss, speaking to reporters after England were bowled out for 264 on the fourth day of the first Test, said: “You need to be a rocket scientist to work out where things have gone wrong, we haven’t put scores on the board and we are not going to win too many test matches if that’s the case.”
England, dismissed Sri Lanka for 318 in the first innings, before, stunning the cricketing community by collapsing to 193 all out.
“We just didn’t apply ourselves in the right manner in the first innings, in the fourth innings you can understand the odd ball spitting and you’ll get the odd dismissal but the first innings was no excuse and that is what is most frustrating” Strauss said.
Spin bowling has been the main weakness of the squad, as Saeed Ajmal confused and continually asked questions of the English batsmen, when Pakistan whitewashed England 3-0 in their Test series.
It has been no different in the first Test against Sri Lanka, as Rangana Herath, who took 12 wickets in the match, completely ripped the heart out of the England batting lineup.
Strauss, who has not been in the best of forms with the bat, however, praised Jonathan Trott, who was the only England batsman that played a composed innings.
“Everyone has got different game plans, there’s always a balance between attack and defence in test cricket and Jonathan was a good example of that. He put the bad balls away and a lot of the time he was patient enough to wait for that bad ball” Strauss added.
With the second test set to begin on the 3rd of April, Strauss is hoping for a better performance from the entire squad, in order to retain any hope of ending the losing streak.
“A lot of the guys have got great pedigree with the bat and they will get another opportunity to prove it in next week’s second test in Colombo” Strauss said.