Tom Fordyce, on his BBC Blog, pooh poohs the idea that England should pick Trescothick and Ramprakash for the last test. He points out Ramprakash’s poor average as a reason not to pick him for the next test. He mentions that we are 1-1 and not 4-0 down, so there is no reason to panic. He denigrates county cricket as a flat-track paradise. This is symptomatic of those who believe in consistency of selection…..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tomfordyce/2009/08/ponting_left_laughing_as_engla.html

No-one is advocating a return to the dark old days of the revolving door, the one test match batsman at the Oval who you never see again – Alan Wells, Paul Parker, John Stephenson and Alan Butcher to name but four – but those who don’t learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them, and selecting that middle order again is asking for trouble. If Cook or Strauss get a belter early on, and you expose Bopara to the new ball, are you seriously expecting him to succeed? When he has failed seven times out of seven so far (being harsh – he has had a couple of 30s)? Past history has told you, no. He has scored runs only against the West Indies, and that isn’t a gauge of future success. Not really.

There is a school of thought going around, and not without its merits, that England should not over-react to this defeat. I think that is a sound, fair comment, and yet what does the evidence point to when it comes to our batting. Strauss has a 161, Cook has a 96 and no-one else has got past 74. In the whole series. That is not batting designed to win test matches. We are off to an Oval surface which in the last game yielded 1200 runs for 9 wickets over four run-soaked days. Surrey are hamstrung by a pitch that batsmen can make hay on. The Surrey authorities have a hotel to pay for and are going to coin it in as much as possible by ensuring this test lasts five days. We need to bat well, and as I have said over the years, England are never going to be a team that can make consistently big scores. So far we have got past 400 on two occasions, and nearly lost one of those tests. At The Oval, 400 might not be enough.

So do you stick with the failures or pick a different line-up? You know my thoughts already. To keep the same team falls into the trap of comfortable stagnation as I mentioned in my old blog last year. That post mentions trying out Bopara, but we chose to look at the evidence of cosy runs against cosy opposition rather than test him earlier. For one test only, I’d see if the old codgers could come back, and if they choose not to do that, throw in one debutant (Trott, Denly, Carberry whoever) for Bopara and someone with test experience for Bell (which probably means Key as he is not seen as past it).

Australia are laughing of course, but they did some key changes too – bringing in Stuart Clark who bowled so well in the first innings, and dropping Phil Hughes for Shane Watson. They adapted their gameplan before it was too late. England haven’t.