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If it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck and swims like a duck then there is a fair chance it is a duck. Similarly if a side bats like a plate of lemons and then bowls like a bag full of lemons then almost certainly what you are watching is a set of lemons. England were dreadful today and it really is no surprise. The batting line-up looks woeful. It looks like it is designed to fail. If Strauss, the only man in the side that can make more than fifty, gets out early who is going to make runs:

• Cook? Err, no.
• Bopara? Not very likely. Has gone from impressive to schoolboy-like in one series
• Bell? No, obviously.
• Collingwood? Has there ever been a crisis that Collingwood didn’t make worse?
• Prior? Well, maybe actually but by the time he comes in everyone else has lost their head and he has to manage the crumbling tail-enders.

Without Pietersen or Flintoff to give England some backbone they are a failboat just waiting to be launched. It all looked so promising for a few weeks too...