The top sides have stayed there for a long period of time. We lasted for a fleeting moment but I get the impression some of our players and backroom staff thought they had achieved it all. They were wrong and since losing that status England have had too many distractions. Andrew Strauss resigning the captaincy, the Kevin Pietersen affair and injuries to key men. We have lost our focus. Gone off the boil. I do not think we are challenging ourselves enough. England need to get back to what made them No 1.

England are at their best when they have lost a Test. The key is not to get in trouble in the first place. The great sides do not lose the first Test. They steamroll you from the first morning. As well as New Zealand will play as a unit I do not think England have anything to fear, except complacency. If we go into this Test thinking New Zealand are an ordinary side so there is nothing to worry about, then England might lose.

New Zealand surprised England in the winter with determined and gutsy performances which could have won them the series.

Nobody expected England to be so poorly prepared with some players undercooked and others not having any time in the middle.

Then there was the 10-day holiday in Queenstown which allowed the players to switch off and once the Tests started we batted so pathetically in the first innings at Dunedin that from then on we were playing catch-up cricket.

Guts and strong character got us through, particularly Matt Prior and Monty Panesar at the death in Auckland. That series gave us a real kick up the backside and hopefully this time we will be better prepared mentally with all our guys in good cricket form.

We have already seen our second best in New Zealand will not cut it so we had better be up for this challenge. New Zealand teams have nearly always played above themselves. The players tend to unite and the team is usually better than the sum of its parts.

Since Ross Taylor was messily dismissed as captain Brendon McCullum has taken to the leadership job naturally. He is inventive, experienced and worth his place as a batsman. The guys will follow him. Once he was a keeper-batsman but now he is a captain and batsman. A proper leader.

Every touring team is excited to play at Lord’s. It is a special place with a wonderful history and many cricketers from abroad realise they may only get one chance to play a Test match at the mecca of cricket. So for them it is a huge occasion and they are really up for the game, so we had better be ready.

If our guys think playing two Tests against New Zealand is the hors d’oeuvre before the main course of the Ashes then they will get in trouble. We need to take New Zealand seriously and not focus on Australia but focus on winning and winning well.

Playing poorly against New Zealand would be the worst possible build-up for the Ashes. Losing is unthinkable. We must win to gain confidence which will go a long way to erasing the memory of mistakes made in New Zealand and leave our players and the whole cricketing public feeling good about our team with the Ashes to come.

England have some question marks of their own. Has Graeme Swann got over his elbow operation? Can Stuart Broad consistently bowl with pace and accuracy? He lost it in India where he was very ordinary and was finally dropped before improving somewhat in New Zealand. Someone has to help him rediscover his batting. He batted well in Auckland but the rest of the winter if you got up to make a cup of tea when he went out to bat you missed his innings. He can be a very good late-order batsman and we need him to rediscover that form.

Then there are the two youngsters in the middle order, Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow. Without the presence of Pietersen our batting does not look quite as intimidating. Root is in great form. Three centuries so far with more to come. The kid is really good. This is no flash in the pan.

Jonny is different. India and New Zealand set his career back so this is a chance to move it forward again. It was not totally his fault that he had a poor winter. In India the selection committee gave him one game in Mumbai as a late stand-in for Ian Bell. He went home because of his mum’s illness and lost his place in the one-day team. Jonny is very talented but he needs an arm round his shoulder. He needs a bit of good fortune to remind people how brilliantly he played at Lord’s last summer against South Africa, the best attack in the world.

Jonny is a proper middle-order player and one of the few players who can play like KP. He can also play sensibly but if he gets in he can take the bowling apart and accelerate the scoring rate. You need players such as Root, Jonathan Trott and Alastair Cook. They are good, sound batsmen but you need a couple of guys like KP and Bairstow, who, if they get in, can take the game away. He has that ability.

Eventually he will get Prior’s job as keeper. But the way Prior is playing it will be a while yet. His wicketkeeping and batting are top class.

Not me, not anybody. England were up for the challenge in India and complacent in New Zealand.

Everyone knew playing India away from home would be really tough. But we all felt on paper England were better than New Zealand.

But it shows that if you do not prepare well, get your mind on the job and play your best cricket then you will be embarrassed.

Matt Prior and Ian Bell played fantastically to dig England out of a hole. Both are positive players who had to change their natural game to adapt to the situation.

But some of the biggest plaudits should go to Stuart Broad. His batting in recent Test matches has been awful, yet he showed character to just stay there.

How the hell he did it I will never know because his feet were all over the place.

The draw was saved but Alastair Cook has to take most of the blame for the mess in this Auckland Test.

From the moment he won the toss and decided to bowl he handed the initiative to New Zealand. It was misguided to give the advantage to the opposition on a good batting pitch.

I was always taught that if it is a batting pitch, you bat. If it is in the bowlers’ favour then bowl. Keep it simple. Do not get too far ahead. Put the runs on the board and then you dictate the course of the game.

Ricky Ponting messed up trying to out-think England in the 2005 Ashes at Edgbaston. He thought it was clever to put England in. We got 400 in one day and won the match.

Cook did the same here. Once you make 450 batting first you are in control of the game. To put England’s batsmen under pressure batting second I believe was silly.

We have a new man making his way opening – Nick Compton – got a young kid at six in Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow had played one first-class innings since August. He has been a drinks waiter and fielder all winter.

Bowling first does not make sense when you look at those facts. It is like playing a left-back at centre forward.

After his fast bowlers could not get any seam movement or swing on the first morning they appeared to be resigned to the fact they could not get anybody out.

In the next two sessions we gave the impression of going through the motions without really believing we could get wickets.

Our body language was poor, they were laughing and smiling, and it was inevitable New Zealand would pile up 250 for one.

The next day we changed gear and got stuck into the New Zealand batsmen. There was an intensity and aggression that was missing on the first day.

England took nine wickets for 193 runs on the same flat deck but it was too late. From then on we were playing catch-up cricket.

We depended on the batsmen achieving parity with New Zealand’s 450, but with scoreboard pressure, and no Kevin Pietersen in the team we folded.

We did the same in the second innings. In a short evening session we bowled fantastically to reduce New Zealand to eight for three but on the fourth morning we lost it and produced the worst captaincy and fielding positions I have seen from an England team in years.

In the end we were totally embarrassed with nine fielders on the boundary.

Our bowlers had no chance and New Zealand’s batsmen took the mickey out of us by blocking it and running quick twos.

When we were cock of the north and No1 in the world James Andersonwrote: “This could be the best England team of all time”. Really? It did not look like that at any stage in this Test series.

Maybe that is the problem. Some of the players and backroom staff believe they are better than they are. They need taking down a peg or two.

Everything stems from the captain. Decision making, field placing, attitude from the players.

It is not enough to say we have one of the nicest young men and best batsmen in the world as captain if we perform like this.

We need to face up to facts. In the past 12 months we have won five Tests and lost eight. That is not a great record for a top team. It is the inconsistent cricket that hurts.

Sloppy first-innings batting in Dunedin and Auckland caused us huge problems. The fast bowlers have veered from bowling really well to ordinary.

To stay top of the tree you have to have a level of performance that does not slip. It is the coach and the captain who set the tone.

If they accept all the praise when we are winning then they have to take some constructive criticism when we do not play well and do something about it.

At the moment he is excelling in the middle order against the old ball. But it is just a matter of time before he opens for his country and follows in the great tradition of Yorkshire and England openers Herbert Sutcliffe, Sir Len Hutton, myself and Michael Vaughan.

He has been brought up to bat properly but is different from previous generations because from an early age one-day cricket has been ingrained in his development. Looking to score singles, rotating the strike or being inventive when necessary is just second nature to him.

He plays without fear and but for some unforeseen serious injury, God forbid, he will be playing all forms of cricket for England for many years. The trick for the England management is when to move him up the order.

Facing new ball bowlers in Test matches can be much tougher than county cricket. Ask all those one-Test wonders who tried and failed. Move him too soon and he could have a few failures that set him back. But whatever he has been asked to do in his development at Yorkshire, he has surprised and excelled.

I felt he may not be ready to open for England until the end of our summer but sometimes youngsters surprise you. That is nice when it happens and that is sport. He has a sound temperament. Nothing fazes him and I can’t see any weaknesses in his batting for a young man of 22. If he is lucky enough to avoid injury then he will play more Test matches than me and score far more runs than me.

Contrast his development with his Yorkshire colleague Jonny Bairstow. Jonny came home early from India because of a family illness and he missed the one-day internationals in India. Since then he has fallen down the pecking order in one-day and Test match cricket.

I have been one of those people who privately and publicly has sung the praises of our selectors and the way the management have run the England set up in last few years but it is a disgrace that our squad players now travel on tours as if they are on a paid holiday.

The lack of warm-up matches means kids like Jonny are going backwards. A kid who played as well as he did at Lord’s against South Africa last summer now does not get a game. He has been shoved to the back burner.

The itinerary is appalling for those not in the first team. When the last one-day international finished in Auckland on Feb 23, England had 10 days until the first Test match in Dunedin, which starts on Tuesday night.

The England and Wales Cricket Board could have organised two three-day matches which would have given guys like Bairstow and Monty Panesar valuable match practice. Instead they have just played one four-day game in Queenstown and then straight into the Test series which sees them play three consecutive matches. It is shocking really.

Bairstow has not had the chance to keep wicket since he played one game in the World Twenty20 in September. He would have been better off keeping wicket and playing with the Lions team in Australia. It does not help the boy and his career. What happens if Matt Prior breaks a finger?

He was a competitor in every respect. I spoke to him recently about cancer because I know how difficult it is to get your head around being diagnosed with the disease. I talked about how he had to keep his chin up and stay positive. He was upbeat and ready to do the best he could.

Over Christmas he sent a message to friends that had been filmed in his garden. He was playing table tennis with his son and looking well.

Tony was mentally ready to tackle the disease and prepared for his chemotherapy in the new year. His death has come as a huge shock.

I remember him as an excellent cricketer. I don’t say nice things about people just because they have passed away. I tell the truth and Tony was a far better player than many people realise.

He was also a far better player than some people want to give him credit for because even after all these years they have not forgiven him for leading the Kerry Packer revolution.

 He was an imposing figure at the crease and would never shirk away from a challenge. He was not a player who would say nasty things to opponents. He did not need to snarl to motivate himself.He was competitive with a smile on his face. You don’t laugh when you are playing fast bowling but he approached it with humour and sometimes that would really wind up opponents.There would be moments batting with him when he would infuriate fast bowlers.

If he played one of his expansive drives, and he was a very good off driver, and got an inside edge that luckily flew past the stumps for four or over the slips, he would express amusement. I might think ‘Oh my, I nearly nicked that,’ but he laughed it off and that really got up the noses of fast bowlers.

At the end of the over the bowler would be looking at him snorting fire saying ‘you lucky so and so’ but Tony would walk down the pitch and talk to me with a chuckle. It was clever.

If you lose your cool then you lose your discipline and Tony would win the battle. He also loved bouncing tail-enders, particularly fast bowlers because they bounced him. The difference was Tony knew he could play the short ball and they couldn’t so he would give them a bit back. He didn’t care.

As a captain he was a leader of men. I would not say he was tactically adroit. That was not his strength but he was an excellent man-manager.

He was clever enough to realise his strengths and slight weaknesses. He would turn to senior players like Keith Fletcher and Alan Knott and ask their opinion and views. He tapped into their tactical nous. That is clever. It shows a man who does not let his ego get in the way of doing the job properly.

He could also lift his players. He would encourage them and coax the best out of the them.

He was also a bit of an innovator. Down the years many batsmen have copied his stance. He was the first to stand at the crease with his bat raised in the air. Now it is commonplace but it came from Tony Greig.

To average 40.43 with the bat and 32.20 with the ball shows how good he was as a player. Only Ian Botham can better his all-round record for England. He was also the best tall slip catcher I have seen.

He had a long way to get down but he had huge hands and took some brilliant catches which if they happened today would be repeated on television endlessly. But some people forget all of that because they are still angry with him over the Packer revolution.

You have to put that in the context of the era. There is money galore in cricket these days. Ordinary, average players can now earn a lot of money playing in different Twenty20 leagues around the world. They can pull in sums we could only have dreamed about in the 1970s.

Tony played in an era, like me, when we earned tuppence ha’penny playing for England. In the summer of 1977, when he signed for Packer, we played five Test matches in England against Australia for £400 per Test.

That was not exactly riches so when Mr Packer came along and offered £25,000 guaranteed each year for three winters’ work you can understand why people snatched his hands off.

Tony was also looking for a job after cricket. All those people who slapped you on the back when you were playing were not there to give you a job when you finished. And Packer gave Tony a job commentating that lasted for 33 years and one he performed very well.

He was a valued friend and family man and he was a gentle giant.

Greig factfile

• Born: Oct 6, 1946 Queenstown, South Africa
• Tests: 58
• Runs: 3,599 at 40.43
• Highest score: 148
• Centuries: 8 Fifties 20
• Wickets: 141 at 32.20
• Best bowling figures: 8-86
• Debut: v Aus, Old Trafford 1972
• Last Test: v Aus, The Oval, 1977
• Captain P14 W3 L5 D6
• ODIs: 22
• Runs: 269 at 16.81
• Wickets: 19 at 32.57
• First-class games: 350
• Career span: 1965-78
• Runs: 16,660 at 31.19
• Wickets: 856 at 28.85

Earlier this year we lost three Tests against Pakistan and one against Sri Lanka. We then batted appallingly in the first Test at Ahmedabad to lose by an innings. Suddenly everybody in India thought this set of Englandplayers would roll over and get beaten 4-0.

They deserve a lot of praise for showing character, determination and ability to come back and win well in Mumbai and Calcutta.

That was not straightforward either because England have had problems. They had to find a new opening batsman after Andrew Strauss’s retirement.

They have also had to identify another middle-order player in, first, Jonny Bairstow and then Joe Root. Their big fast bowler, Steven Finn, has broken down twice so could only play in one Test and Stuart Broad featured only in two matches, failing to take a wicket before succumbing to injury.

Tim Bresnan played in two Test matches but he has been 10km slower and pretty easy to face since his elbow operation earlier this year. So England have won this series with only three major bowlers: James Anderson, Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar.

We also made a cock-up in our selection in Ahmedabad by picking three seamers and leaving Panesar out. You cannot say this series has been plain sailing for England.

I accept that India are not the force they have been in the past. Two great batsmen have retired in VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid while Sachin Tendulkar is no longer the great player he once was. Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan have been fine bowlers but are past their best. You could say touring India is a bit easier now because the hotels are better, English food in the big cities is excellent and travelling is so much easier.

So if you wanted to undermine the victory you could but, quite frankly, of recent performances this ranks second only to winning in Australia two years ago.

Nobody should try to belittle what England have achieved. You can only play against the team selected and, in the past, even average Indian sides have been difficult to beat at home. To put it into context, this is only the fifth time England have won a series in India in 14 attempts.

Alastair Cook, Kevin Pietersen and Anderson have been outstanding. We have seen a true world-class performance from each of them. Our two spinners, Swann and Panesar, outbowled the two Indian spinners. Even famous former Indian cricketers have accepted our two spinners are much better than theirs. That is a real compliment.

There are areas we should improve on the trip coming up to New Zealand, when we will begin to focus on the Ashes in England next year.

Someone needs to get into Ian Bell’s head and explain to him that he has great talent but he must improve his thought process and return to his form of 2011. The one innings here in Nagpur showed he can be a class act, but he cannot keep repeating the stupid shots that cost him his wicket both in Ahmedabad and in the first innings in this last Test. He needs to raise his game.

Joe Root, will now provide Bell with competition. The coaching staff and English hierarchy think highly of Root and will try to find a place for him in the middle order whatever happens because they regard him, correctly, as is the next top-class player coming through.

Then there is Jonny Bairstow. He still has a bit to learn against the slow turning ball but England will want him in the side because he is very good under pressure and plays the seamers well.

Nobody will have forgotten his innings last summer at Lord’s against South Africa’s seam attack, the world’s best. He was under pressure, so were the team, but he coped superbly.

You cannot drop Nick Compton. He has had some good starts and not built on them. But he has helped us to make platforms for the middle order. It would be unfair not to give him further opportunities in New Zealand.

We have to get Broad back to fitness and, more importantly, bowling at pace. In the two Tests he played here, he produced “powder-puff” deliveries, floating the ball down the pitch. He is a key bowler for England and a useful batsman. Finn is a concern because he has tremendous talent, with pace and bounce because of his height. But if he cannot stay fit and get on the park, he is no use to the team.

I really believe that Graham Onions must come back into the selectors’ thoughts. He was a forgotten man on this tour. Somehow he has been shoved down the pecking order but conditions in New Zealand and England make him a fine bowler. His performances against Australia when they toured in 2009, for example, were excellent.

Like all great winning teams, England should enjoy the spoils of victory but also look on this as a time to improve. Do not court complacency. Prepare for the next challenge.

The difference between the teams is that England are always looking to improve. But this Indian side are happy living on past glories.

There are individuals who have been exceptional, such as Alastair Cook, Kevin Pietersen, Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann, but I feel as a team unit we have played with more determination, energy and drive than India.

Whether it has been fielding or bowling, we have looked like a side who want to win. A good example is the seam bowlers, who have a very difficult time taking wickets in India because they play on grassless, dry pitches that don’t move or bounce much, which can sap the desire out of any quality fast bowler.

But James Anderson and Steven Finn have keep charging in at the Indians, putting them under pressure through the intensity of their effort, so even when the spinners have not been bowling, the Indian batsmen have not had an easy ride.

Although the spinners will rightly get most of the credit for wickets taken in three Tests our fast bowlers and fielders have played a big part.

They have never let up in that desire and determination which has been brilliant to watch and it must be very pleasing for Cook as a new captain. England now have a golden chance to win only their fourth series inIndia. Cook can follow Douglas Jardine in 1934, Tony Greig in 1976-77, and David Gower in 1984-85. That gives you an idea of how damn difficult it is to get India down in their own back yard.

We have deservedly done it through sheer bloody-mindedness, perseverance and talent.

I think we have a great chance of beating them in Nagpur because too many of the Indian batsmen are not playing very well.

India’s batsmen have shown a lack of patience and adaptability to playing Test cricket. This country is crazy on T20 since the onset of the IPL. Their own players are earning such huge sums of money which were unthinkable five years ago.

And this is affecting their technique, mental attitude and perspective on cricket. Every kid is only interested in watching 20 overs, growing up to be a T20 player and the people who love Test cricket are of the older generation.

With this sort of mindset and the amount of 20-over and 50-over cricket the India team plays I don’t totally blame them for finding it difficult to adapt from so much one day stuff to playing a proper batting game in Test matches.

It is their batsmen letting them down more than their spinners. OK, their spinners are not great. Pragyan Ojha and Ravichandran Ashwin are not bad bowlers but in two Test matches the batsmen have failed to take the opportunity of winning the toss on flat pitches. India always used to post huge totals in their own country and put the opposition under pressure so that any Indian spinner had a chance of bowling out the foreigners.

Now the batsmen make so many sloppy errors, loose shots and have technical deficiencies in footwork. I have never seen an Indian batting side play such slack, loose and appalling shots in their own country.

This is their own territory where they have reigned supreme. They usually bat people out of the game. Now they couldn’t bat their way out of a paper bag. And this is the fundamental problem with Indian cricket.

The great players have gone. Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman have retired and Sachin Tendulkar is a shadow of the great batsman of the past.

Their best technical young batsman, Virat Kohli, who has been lorded to the high heavens after last year’s performances, has had five innings and played five awful shots in this series.

After a double and a single hundred that helped them win the first Test and should have helped them do better at Mumbai, Cheteshwar Pujara has had three failures and there is nobody else in the team you can rely on to make runs.

Gautam Gambhir has had two half centuries but plays like a cat on a hot tin roof, jumping around and it is never a surprise to me when he gets out. Yet this guy is the highest paid player in IPL with $2.4 million for six weeks’ work. I rest my case.

If the Indian board don’t sort this out quickly all the money in the world they make from IPL, television and sponsorship won’t help keep Test cricket alive in India. But they have just doubled their money from the title sponsor of the IPL. It is all they are interested in.

The focus is Twenty20 until they lose. Maybe now it might make somebody wake up and redress the balance. If they lose to us in Nagpur they will have to change their own priorities.

It is risk-free batting which is exactly what you want up front. If I wanted someone to thrill me, I would send for Kevin Pietersen. But if I wanted someone to guarantee me runs I would put my money on Cook above anyone else in the world.

As an opener there is nothing better than wearing the opposition down. Those big, fast bowlers start with energy and fire in their belly but you grind them down to the point they feel they are bowling at a brick wall. You take the spirit out of them and that is exactly what he did to India on Thursday. They were broken and going through the motions by the end of the day.

That was my idea of opening the batting and he plays in a fashion similar to me. It is how I was taught: see off the new ball, give the innings a good start, but carry on and make runs yourself. It’s very simple. It is no good being flashy. Punchy little twenties and thirties don’t win Test matches; hundreds do.

Cook is a natural opener but I batted down the order as a young man. I was nervous of the new ball. But Brian Close made me open. He said: “You’ve got two choices: you can be 12th man or you can open.” It was simple and it worked. Round peg in a round hole, just like Alastair.

Like me, Cook loves batting. My Uncle Algy gave me the best advice when I was a youngster. First: “Stay in, because you can’t score runs in the pavilion.” And second: “Listen, it’s better your team-mates are watching you bat than you are in the pavilion watching them bat.”

Well, England have sat there watching Cook bat for most of the last couple of years. He knows his own game and he keeps it very simple. He plays in safe areas. He doesn’t try to be too expansive early on. It is a case of limiting himself, although he is not a limited player.

He’s clever and makes it difficult for the bowlers to bowl him out. He doesn’t give them chances because he sticks to his game plan until he gets in. Then, when he has a few runs, and is in the comfort zone, he expands his repertoire.

I felt fine about him going past my record. They are there to be broken. When I got up there with Colin Cowdrey and Wally Hammond or passed Len Hutton I didn’t think it made me a better player than them.

Facts and figures don’t tell you everything. They don’t tell you the quality of the opposition, the type of surfaces or what laws the game was played under.

Statistics give you a yardstick as to how good you were in your era against contemporary players. Anyone can make stats say anything. Politicians do it all the time: that’s why we don’t trust them.

You can only judge Alastair alongside modern-day players and I would put him in the top five with Michael Clarke, Hashim Alma, Jacques Kallis and Pietersen.

By the time he finishes his career there is every chance Cook will have scored more runs and hundreds than the lot of them. He could finish second only behind Sachin Tendulkar.

England play about 14 Test matches a year. Cook is just approaching his peak as a player and could play in another 100 Tests. If he carries on and scores one century in every four Tests then he will be pushing Tendulkar.

Of course there could be little injuries along the way and losses of form. We have seen in the past how when his technique slips a little bit he gets in a mess. He struggled in 2010 and it was touch and go whether they would pick him for the Oval Test against Pakistan. He scored a century in that game and has not looked back since.

Being captain lifts you. It is your team and you want to play well and win. You are up for the challenge. In recent times Ricky Ponting, Clarke and Graeme Smith have played out of their skin when they became captain and Cook is doing the same.

Cook has got it. Don’t make mistakes, don’t get out of your comfort zone and there will be only one winner.