Form goes out of the window when England don their pyjamas

So England go into the last game of their West Indies tour with the chance of salvaging something from a truly awful winter. Without a win of any description a week ago, they sit at 2-2 in a one day series in which they have been largely inferior but have shown great spirit and, unlike their opponents, an unwavering ability to count.

For the players, the end of the tour cannot come quickly enough. Kevin Pietersen, a model of discretion, judgement and timing as ever, has made that abundantly clear. According to him, the England camp is a miserable place to be, a public remark which will not exactly have done wonders to improve that, and he has since stated that he never intends to be away from his wife for 11 weeks again. In fact he has missed her so much that he’s off to play in the IPL in 2 weeks time.

We have not really learned very much about England’s one day cricket in the past week or two, other than that Andrew Strauss is more than capable of holding down a place in the team. What we already knew is that matters such as form are utterly irrelevant when England are playing. They are consistent only in their inconsistency, as shown when they followed up a 4-0 victory over South Africa with a 5-0 defeat against India. For England, momentum is something which happens to other people.

In truth, they would be 3-1 down and the series would have gone if John Dyson had not successfully reversed over 200 years of effort by his Australian countrymen to prove that they are not innumerate and illiterate by getting his sums wrong. In fact sums had nothing to do with it, he just read the wrong number. That put England one up but they fell just short in the second test. That this game was close was entirely down to Strauss which, given that he has been out of the side, raises some serious questions about whether the selectors would be able to describe the difference between a posterior and an arm joint.

Then came the third game. It was pathetic, abject, embarrassing, spineless, clueless and lots of other adjectives which appear under the general heading of ‘utterly crap’. This was when Pietersen started to make his feelings known. It was also the game in which the Andrew Flintoff’s 30th return from injury in the past year was supposed to galvanise the team. I have all the sympathy in the world for Flintoff’s injury problems and think he’s a fabulous player but he is no longer a top 6 batsman and has not been for some time. He is extremely hit and miss, always takes time to come back to form after an injury and his inclusion in that position makes our batting seem thin and our tail very long indeed.
But what do you know? As if to prove that nobody does inconsistency better than England, we come back and take the 4th match fairly comfortably, once again thanks to that devastating trio, Messrs Strauss, Duckworth and Lewis, currently in a competitive three-way battle for England’s player of the series.

But do not forget, form is temporary, usually restricted to one occasional match in England’s case, lack of class is permanent. The path of this series has defied all logic so far and it would be a brave man who tried to call the final game on Friday. If England are to go into this most crucial of summers feeling even vaguely good about themselves then they have no choice but to win this match. If they do not, then, with the exception of Strauss and Graeme Swann, there is truly almost nothing that they can take away from this winter.

By Stuart Peel

April 1, 2009