Cowardice

Lynne McConnell as good as calls John Bracewell a big girlie blouse in a piece in this morning's Cricinfo.

What he says makes a little sense, but the fact is, the presence of Marshall and Butler would not have saved us. Selection is not the issue anymore. Our batting in the second innings is. The last four New Zealand losses have come in very quick succession and all of them are marked by dismal batting in the second innings. I suspect that the reason for this is not for want of different players or a lack of talent, but lack of a plan. We know what we should do in the first innings - in England the plan was to plant a platform and then attack, in Australia it was to grind out a total - but we never seem to have any idea what we are doing in the second. Our players seem to play a jumbled mix of half-hearted defence and half-hearted attack, and that is no recipe for success.