Flower concerned by batting frailties
August 23, 2010 10:23:09 UK
Andy Flower is apprehensive about England's recent batting collapses and has challenged his side to put things right at Lord's next week.
Tim Bresnan joins the team for the decider.England's top order will be unchanged for the series decider against Pakistan, with all-rounder Tim Bresnan the only addition to the 11 that lost a compelling third Test by four wickets on Saturday.
Betting for the fourth test has England at 1.80 to triumph, Pakistan can be backed at 6.00 while the draw is 2.87.
Ball has dominated bat for most of the summer, with batsmen from both sides frequently failing to post big totals in conditions that have aided swing and seam.
England were punished for two collapses at the Brit Insurance Oval and, with the series still alive at 2-1 to the hosts, Flower wants to see better at HQ.
"On the batting side, I thought we underperformed without a doubt," said England's team director.
"On a good Oval pitch, scores of 230 and 220 weren't good enough to win a Test match.
"I think the first two pitches we played on at Trent Bridge and Edgbaston were very tricky surfaces. So they would have undoubtedly have contributed to collapses.
There is a different style of batting in international cricket these days.
Andy Flower
"At The Oval, although we won the toss and batted, they were still quite trying conditions. But in the second innings there were no excuses whatsoever. We set up a brilliant platform through Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott and we performed poorly after that. Any batting collapse is concerning and there have been too many of them.
"As a batting team we need to produce better results, simple as that. Lord's should provide us with a very good opportunity to put things right and it is the responsibility of all of us to make sure that happens."
While movement through the air - as well as off helpful pitches - has been the obvious reason for the low totals on show this year, Flower believes it is also a result of changing attitudes.
With the popularity of one-day and Twenty20 cricket growing around the world nowadays, Flower thinks Test match batting has become a more swashbuckling endeavour.
Trott's three-and-a-half hour 36 on Friday was out of step with the rest of the game - and the reaction to his knock interested Flower.
"There is a different style of batting in international cricket these days," he said. "It is without doubt more attacking and with that has come - though I don't know the stats - a heavier percentage of results and shorter games.
"We saw evidence of that when Trott played an obdurate innings in our second innings and it was looked at as very rare and questioned by certain people about whether it was the right type of innings. That was good, old-fashioned Test match batting. I thought it was quite a good example of how attitudes to strike rates in Test cricket have changed."
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