Every week on this fledgling England cricket tour to SA, we are all reminded of how far England have to go to be the best. After that dubious one-win win thanks to Messrs Duckworth and Lewis, the visitors were utterly decimated in the second match. Records were shattered as were the England bowlers who probably wept into their cornflakes if they cared to scan their bowling figures. So what, 20/20 is frivolous stuff before the ODIs and Tests, right?

Well, if you’re England then perhaps…but all the other nations are taking this form of cricket seriously. England have this frustrating Englishness about them. Why not get KP to open the batting in twenty20 cricket? Stick Eoin Morgan up the order for goodness sake. Why the hell is Cook captaining a 20/20 when he shouldn’t even be in the bloody squad?! England just don’t get it and that’s not me ranting about an absolute cricketing massacre. It was just the same in the last World Cup where we didn’t have the players a la Trescothick whose sole intention was to hit the cover off the ball from the off. It’s not even that they weren’t on the pitch, they’d been left at home!

Hopefully England can sweep this under the carpet as a meaningless blip but the cold truth is that after the weekend, SA have surging confidence and Alistair Cook is probably wishing the weekend just never happened. Bowling Joe Denly ahead of Adil Rashid? Oh dear.

As if anyone didn’t know, this is a tough Tour and if they don’t bounce back in the ODIs, it’ll also be a long old grind for England.

Wouldn’t it be great now if Strauss and Flower knock their heads together and decide to catch SA on the hop.
They’ll open with KP and Denly for the ODIs or hell, anything, anything daring….