England Were Not Complacent, They Were Just Outplayed

By asking a leading question a Sky Sports interviewer managed to get the leg spinner Mushtaq Ahmed to suggest that England had lost the Test series because they were complacent. This is untrue. Pakistan defeated England because they played better.

Any team who suffer a disappointing defeat will be labelled as complacent by the media, while any team who win against the odds will be praised as having great self-belief. Self-belief only becomes complacency if the team loses; the English journalists would have been swapping the two definitions regularly whilst writing their reports for the 1st Test in Multan.

If the media really want to explain what went wrong they need to provide more than a one-word analysis. In my view the batsmen need to be more patient. This was not only true in Pakistan but also during the narrow victory at Trent Bridge, where unnecessarily aggressive batting almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Unfortunately the English players appeared to learn that aggressive reckless shot selection was the way to chase a modest victory target. A good coach should be prepared to criticise players for adopting the wrong tactics, even if they prove to be successful. The captains I’ve played under have always been quick to point out that long-hops and full-tosses are a fortunate way to take wickets!