Unsafety In The England Side

England would be facing Australia in the coming Ashes if all are aware of. Unfortunately, team England do not seem to have the privileges that either South Africa or India are found to have. Despite being the home team for the coming Ashes, England still seem to be the underdogs for this Ashes as well. It is a well known fact that Australia are no more the team they were a couple of years back. But, so are England too. Even England are not found playing good or even decent cricket at the moment. Else, what on earth made them lag behind in the ongoing test series against the West Indies?

Forget about the first test where may be that players from England cricket team were new to the West Indies pitches. But, even that shouldn't have been the reason for collapsing so badly by getting themselves all out for a paltry score of just 51 on the board. When it came to the second, there were a lot of mishaps when the pitch where the test match was played on was just friendly for a controversy and laughter and nothing else. The second test had to be played as an unscheduled third test match at a different. Anyway, that is not England's fault whatsoever. In the fourth test at Bridgetown, a score of 600 proves to be little for the Windies.

If the pitch was a batsmen friendly one, then the English batsmen should have scored a thousand runs (a little exaggeration is regretted). An all batsmen West Indies team should have chased a higher total. And when someone like Dinesh Ramdin who was found batting at number 7 scoring 166 indeed raises questions as to how come England could manage to declare with four batsmen still there? Wasn't there any sort of game planning by England, for the entire 5 days saw just two out of four innings being completed? By the time England declared their third innings, there was no room for the West Indies to get in to bat for the 2nd time.

As far as the West Indies team is considered, it was not a must win situation for them for they have already taken a lead in the series after their innings win in the first test. But, I wonder as to where the English brains had gone all the way? Since the past four years that I've been following the West Indies cricket especially in tests, they have hardly won any test series. All I can recall is the way they drew their 2 test series against Pakistan 2 years ago. Oh! Yes..they have had victories against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. Perhaps! Had teams like Ireland, Bermuda & Kenya been granted test status, West Indies could have boasted of a few more victories under its belt. And if any team loses to such a side, it would not be necessary to stress upon the caliber of that team.