Butcher and Trescothick pull without care

Bowling attacks can put batsmen under pressure in several different ways. In both innings in this first Test here, England's main batsmen found stupid and unnecessary ways of getting themselves out. In the first innings, the relatively innocuous new-ball bowlers removed the first three in the order and, in the second, one of them, Tinu Yohannan, disposed of both openers.

Spin was always going to be the main threat. The fast bowlers were never likely to be more than the warm-up act and it will have seemed sensible to try to score as many as possible against them before the ball was thrown to Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble.

There was nothing wrong with this thinking, only it cannot be allowed to justify the careless and reckless strokes which caused five crucial wickets to fall. Batsmen who a year ago made such an excellent job of combating Saqlain Mushtaq and Muttiah Muralitharan in these parts had apparently decided that their Indian counterparts could not be similarly dealt with.

England lost this match on the first day after the three left-handers – Mark Butcher, Marcus Trescothick and Graham Thorpe – had found themselves out to poor strikes before the spinners had got going. Nasser Hussain apart, the rest of the batting had no answer to Harbhajan. The left-handers were tempted to self-destruct because of the pressure they were made to feel by the approaching trial by Harbhajan.

Yet Thorpe, twice, Trescothick and Hussain all made invaluable hundreds in the two series a year ago in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. So, too, did Michael Atherton, who has retired and, on this evidence, will be sorely missed. Why should the calmness and composure shown then by Thorpe, Trescothick and Hussain, who played a terrible shot against Kumble in the second innings, have deserted such experienced players so pertinently now?

It is impossible to believe that such a thorough coach as Duncan Fletcher cannot have done his best to prepare them mentally for what lay ahead. Yet Yohannan was made a present of two important wickets in each innings by batsmen who should have known better. This, of course, gave India a start they can never have dreamed of with three seam bowlers all playing their first Test.

It can only have been the apprehension at what was to follow that prompted Butcher in the second innings to play a clumsy pull at a ball which was not short enough. Trescothick also pulled without care and attention when he received a short one and never took the slightest precaution to keep the ball on the ground. This, when England were 231 behind on first innings.

Then there was the most disappointing manner in which the remaining batsmen tried to cope with the spinners. Hussain had been excellent in the first innings, but here he tried to cut a ball from Kumble as if expecting it to turn away from him, although no one should have known better that Kumble has not turned a leg-break for almost as long as anyone can remember. It was a googly and he topped it into his stumps.

It was also thoughtless and this from batsmen who had learned the form so well in this part of the world only last year. It will be much harder to recover from being one match down in India than it was in Sri Lanka, especially as next week's second Test is being played in Ahmedabad, where the ball turns square from the start. Kumble and Harbhajan will already be licking their fingers, not to say their lips, as well.