While their best players are at the zenith of their careers they ought to be making it count by playing as much Test cricket as possible and maybe the players should be imploring the BCCI to give them more Tests over the next couple of years.

It’s nice to be top of the tree and they have nothing to fear from England, South Africa or the Australians, so wouldn’t it be great to play these teams home and away and then India could proudly say we are indisputably number one.

A two Test series is an unsatisfactory way to settle who is the best and a third game here would have captured the imagination of all cricket lovers the world over, not just in India and South Africa; people would have been queuing up to see a fantastic decider and after two wonderful matches we were all left a bit up in the air.

South Africa have only themselves to blame for a heavy defeat because they made serious maistakes before and during the match. The biggest of these was not sending for a specialist wicketkeeper to replace Mark Boucher.

They knew he had a back problem and his stand in, A B de Villiers, has not kept in the longer form of the game for years. He’s done a bit in one-day matches when the pitches are flat and the ball hardly turns but, I’m sorry, it’s a far cry from standing up in a Test match in India where the ball spins and bounces irregularly and any temporary or occasional ‘keeper is going to get caught out.

It wouldn’t have taken much effort to get a replacement with regular flights from Johannesberg to Mumbai and on to Kolkata taking only a day and South Africa paid a heavy price when he missed stumping Sehwag on 43 when he was two yards down the pitch. He didn’t even get the ball in his gloves. If you let a batsman like that off he’ll kill you and currently Sehwag is probably the most consistently destructive batsman in the world.

The second mistake was the bad batting in the first innings. Jacques Kallis, of all people, a classical, technically correct player of the highest class, with only ten runs to his name, tries to slog Harbhajan over mid wicket and Hashim Amla, after making a lovely well-crafted century, tries to hook Zaheer. He’s not a good hooker, never has been, and should have gone on to grind the Indian bowlers down instead of getting complacent and sloppy.

De Villiers was stupidly run out and on top of that Ashwell Prince should never have been on the tour let alone playing in the team he’s been in such a trough of bad form with only 101 runs in seven innings against England.

JP Duminy, the new wonder boy after his feats in Australia, is not in the greatest nick either with 167 in seven knocks against England and both of them are hopeless against off spin when the ball turns. On flat decks they are OK but they play the turning ball so badly it’s clear they just haven’t a clue.

Some of us who saw these two bat against Graeme Swann, the England off spinner, forecast they would be mesmerised by Harbhajan. They either hide the bat behind the pad and get given out leg before for not playing a shot or play at the ball with the bat way in front of the bad and edge to slip. If those two had gone in for a third time Harbhajan would still have bowled them out, they are such novices!

Thirdly, their catching was appalling. Normally so sharp they had a really bad time and India are a tough enough nut to crack on home turf without letting them off the hook time and again. It’s hard enough taking ten wickets but when you have to take 16 or 17 because of fielding lapses winning becomes an impossibility.

Fourthly, when the pitch turns Paul Harris and Duminy bowling against Sehwag, Tendulkar, Laxman and Dhoni is a no contest. They eat spinners for breakfast and even the great Shane Warne couldn’t take his few wickets at a cost of less than 43 runs apiece out there.

South Africa made a rod for their own back with too many mistakes and India were good enough and smart enough to make them pay.

That’s why it’s so important to have VVS Laxman back in the side. Without him and Rahul Dravid there’s a big hole and although there are some decent young batsmen around the newcomers haven’t the same talent, flair and technique. Dravid is a fantastic player, so technically correct and a model for any youngster to follow while Laxman is a magician with lovely touches. Sachin Tendulkar’s record speaks for itself but what happens to Indian cricket when these three go, as they must as age takes its toll.

I haven’t seen any young players who look as though they are capable of picking up the mantle. I’ve seen some young batsmen who are quite good in some departments of their game but that’s not the same. Indian cricket has been based on high quality batting and I think that the first Test against South Africa in Nagpur showed that when the new kids come in, they’re not up to it.

India’s great batsmen have been players to savour and Laxman, Dravid and Tendulkar are artists in their profession in the tradition of India’s finest like, Vishy, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sunny Gavaskar, VJ Merchant, Polly Umrigar, Vinoo Mankad and a host of others, all so talented.

But it doesn’t look to me as though there are any potential greats in the pipeline, I don’t see any icons in the making and it’s going to be a big blow to India and her millions of supporters.

The one-day game and T20 will throw up a few guys who can smash it out of the park and capture the imagination for a time, and yes, they’ll make a good living because cricket is so big in India there will be bat endorsements, TV ads and commercial opportunities. But when will there be another Sachin, a craftsman like Dravid, a magician like VVS?

Every country has a period when a number of great players come together to make an incredible team but it’s sheer luck, a roll of the dice, pure good fortune. Australia had Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, fabulous bowlers, and batsmen like the Waugh brothers, Hayden, Langer and Gilchrist. But we’ve seen that when they all go down like dominoes the next batch aren’t in that class. Look at Australia now. They’re still a good team but no better than South Africa, England or India and far from invincible like their predecessors.

Another example is the West Indian sides of the seventies and eighties; all those tremendous fast bowlers and batsmen like Desmond Haynes, Gordon Greenidge, Sir Viv, Clive Lloyd and before them Lawrence Rowe, Alvin Kallicharran and Rohan Kanhai. But as soon as the last of them retired the team went downhill and are now a shadow of a great team and not one of the present side are in the same class.

The game goes in cycles and India have enjoyed having three rare talents but it’s coming to an end and where are the replacements? There’s a lot of average, decent players but nothing special and we are seeing the last hurrahs of a wonderful trio. They are already missing occasionally from the 50 over and T20 one-day side. No reflection on their talent or on their legacy, but it’s a simple fact that Old Father Time catches up with all of us.

The big picture is not whether India lose to South Africa but where is the next generation?

In Kolkata, VVS is at number three, a position he likes, on one of his favourite grounds and the scene of India’s biggest triumph in March 2001, following on and beating Australia. They will need a similar performance because in Dale Steyn South Africa have the best bowler in the world at the moment. The best praise I can give him is that he is the nearest thing to the great Sir Richard Hadlee as I have seen. He’s got fair pace, an off stump line in that corridor of uncertainty, swings it away and cuts it in and out. The ball he got Sachin with in Nagpur in the first innings was absolute perfection and would have done for anyone. Pitched up, just outside off stump, he drew Sachin forward but it swung late and kept going off the pitch. When you get balls like that, you’ve got a big, big problem. To take 10 wickets in a Test match takes some doing for a pace bowler in India where the pitches are slower than in South Africa or Australia and don’t do as much as in England or New Zealand. That seven for 51 in the first innings did for India and they were in trouble ever after. It was just a matter of time and patience before South Africa winkled out the Indians a second time.

Well, life’s not fair is it? At the moment every Test played in the world is not entirely equal because they all have umpires who see things in different ways; some are more receptive to leg before shouts, others are ‘not outers’, so you never get a completely level playing field and all you can do is play by the laws as interpreted by the umpires. That’s a fact of life.

I accept the point that it would be beneficial to the game if the International Cricket Council who have pots of money paid for hotspot and the snickometer for every Test match but currently they are refusing to cough up and leave it to the host broadcaster. Only Sky, in England, and Channel 9, in Australia, have the whole bag of tricks but if umpires are as incompetent as those recently in South Africa it doesn’t matter how much technology is available. The failures in the England-South Africa series were human errors and not the fault of the system. Daryl Harper couldn’t even turn the knob up on his equipment and let’s be clear Graeme Smith was given not out by the on-field umpire, Tony Hill. The ICC should be asking Hill if he’s deaf because everybody else heard the nick clear as a bell. Two people made human errors, not the system. It can be improved but the profit driven ICC doesn’t want to pay although I think that eventually they will.

If we go back to the old system all we are going to get is huge embarrassment. At Johannesburg there were 30 cameras on the ground and when mistakes are made, as they inevitably are, the TV people are going to show them time and time again and leave the umpires with very red faces. TV showed that AB de Villiers nicked a ball and was given not out but England had no reviews left, more human error.

The problem is umpires like Harper who think we should go back to the old system, they think they are like God and don’t make mistakes while the truth is that they do. In the four match series in South Africa 30 per cent of decisions were overturned on review and remember the third umpire can only reverse a decision, in the words of the ICC, if “there is a high degree of confidence that the on-field decision was wrong.” Today’s umpires may or may not be better or worse than those in my playing days but in my time they didn’t have the close scrutiny of the Television cameras to show whether they were right or wrong. As players we may have thought we were victims of injustice but we couldn’t prove it!

I’ve never changed my view that the international cricket scene would be better off if more ex players became involved in umpiring. They know all the dodges and what to look for and if you’ve played with some of the big names in the world you have status and credibility. The problem is that the ICC want only full time umpires and if you’ve played the game for, say, 15 years you’ve been away from wife, girl friend and /or children enough and don’t want to live in hotels and out of a suitcase any more. It’s a sure recipe for major disharmony in the home if you set off for another ten years on the road. If ex-players were allowed to be part time and do only a five or six week stint twice a year it would prove more attractive to a lot of guys who have turned down long term contracts with the ICC because they value their home life and that’s to the detriment of the international panel of umpires.

So what we get are people who have never been in the limelight as players for county, state or country, who lack cricketing credibility on the big stage and want to be a ‘colourful character’, like Billy Bowden of New Zealand, when what we want is the best umpires. We should have three times the number of umpires with first class cricketing experience spending less time away from home.

Jonathan Trott got off to a decent start in five of his seven innings with scores of 28, 69, 18, 20 and 42 but, again, he never went on to do anything to swing the game in England’s favour. When it’s your day you have to make those good starts count and make a lot of runs.

Kevin Pietersen is our best player, his record for England before this series is better than anybody else’s. But his shot selection was unbelievable and never once was he got out by the bowlers. Some of the really great players have poor series like Peter May in South Africa in 1956-57 when he could hardly get a run in the Tests, making 153 in ten innings. In 1966-67 Ian Chappell could only score 196 in ten innings in South Africa. The difference was the bowlers got them out while Kevin gave himself up.

Someone has to get to KP and tell him he has to play according to the state of the game. He can’t just keep saying ‘this is the way I am, this is how I play’. When you’ve been out of the game for four months you have to play your way back in to form, you can’t just pick up where you left off and he needs telling some home truths.
Matt Prior’s wicketkeeping has improved a lot in the last 12 months but his batting has gone backwards in this series. He played only two decent innings out of seven. So what have we gained? Nothing and that’s hurt us.

Stuart Broad has been touted as the next genuine all rounder to step into Freddie Flintoff’s shoes and he showed lots of promise before this series. There was plenty of discussion about whether he should bat at seven and allow us to include an extra bowler but he failed with 76 runs in seven knocks. What was really disappointing in his last innings in Johannesburg was his attitude to being given out caught off his glove down the leg side. I’ve no problem with him standing and waiting for the umpire’s decision, Graeme Smith did the same and got away with it, but when the TV review showed he was out he went off shaking his head and acting as if he’d been cheated out! He needs a good talking to and reminding if he annoys the umpires with his conduct he won’t get the benefit of any 50/50 decisions when he’s batting or bowling and that hurts England as much as him.

The surprising batting success was Ian Bell who was under serious pressure after the first Test but who subsequently showed his mettle and talent. At Durban he played a quality innings full of lovely strokes to set up a big lead and in Cape Town had two good knocks making 78 in the second innings which went a long way towards saving the game. What was particularly pleasing was that in Durban he played fluently but adapted his game to play a defiant, defensive innings at Newlands.

The other success was Paul Collingwood. He isn’t the prettiest of batsmen and at times looks ungainly with nearly all his power in the bottom hand. But I and the rest of the public take our hats off to him because he has made himself into a very good player. What he lacks in natural ability he makes up for with character, plays according to the situation and doesn’t sell his wicket cheaply. For all the talent of the others above him he’s the one we’ve come to depend on.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; batsmen put you in a position to win, bowlers take the 20 wickets to bring off the victory. But if the batting doesn’t do its job there’s not much the bowlers can do about it.

In the only match we won in Durban we got a big lead and scoreboard pressure told on the South Africans who folded.

Simply, our batting didn’t do its job in the other three matches but who do you replace them with? There’s not much competition and in fact some of them want to think themselves lucky they’re not playing in previous eras. So we have to get more out of what we’ve got or we’ll be in serious trouble in Australia next winter.

I have great admiration for the resolve the players showed at Centurion and Newlands. Unfortunately, the performance in this Test match was a shambles. For the first time in the series, England came across a pitch with pace and bounce, and they couldn’t cut it. On flat surfaces, with Dale Steyn injured or not fully match fit, they’ve been OK. But in Johannesburg, some of the shots they produced beggared belief. It was as if they had packed up their bags, ready for home, with a demob-happy mentality.

In the first innings, Jonathan Trott played eight balls as if he was drunk. Perhaps his second innings wasn’t quite so bad, but he still didn’t look too comfortable against the bouncing ball. In fact, he didn’t seem to have the technique or the stomach for a fight. Which is very worrying, especially if England have pencilled him in as their long-term solution at No 3. You can’t bat there if you don’t relish a battle.

Then there was Kevin Pietersen, who came in with the score at seven for two, and got out by pulling a catch to mid-on. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when England were trying to save the game in the second innings, he drove at a ball so wide he could hardly reach it. From the way these two batted, you’d think they’d been picked for England but were playing for South Africa as double agents.

I get the feeling that Flower and his staff believe Pietersen is untouchable. He shouldn’t be, because the only thing that matters is whether you can get runs and wickets. If you can’t, you should make way for somebody else.
I have always been a great admirer of Kevin, and I still think he is one of the most talented batsmen in the world. The fact is, though, that he has struggled since he came back from his three-month injury break. His whole approach has been wildly off the mark. He has only faced about 350 balls in the series, because he starts playing irresponsibly and extravagantly from the first ball.

I watched a montage of his dismissals on television, and he didn’t get out to a single really good ball in the whole series. Each time he has played a shocking shot (with the sole exception of that other crazy moment when he ran himself out). You’d think that with 16 support staff in the England backroom, someone should tell him to spend more time in the middle.

There are a few technical flaws to work on. Pietersen doesn’t have a solid platform when he plays on the front foot. He walks into his strokes, which means that his right side and leg come around as he makes contact with the ball. The bottom line is that he is off balance both physically and mentally. Until he sorts out his head, the body won’t follow instructions.

Returning to the match, pretty much everything went wrong from the first morning, when Strauss won the toss and batted instead of fielding. It was the second time England had made the wrong call in the series, after they put South Africa in at Centurion. You don’t often see bowler-friendly conditions away from home, so when you get the chance, you had better use them. Even more disappointingly, they showed a real lack of fight when the ball started seaming and swinging around.

The second innings was even stranger. I still don’t know what England were trying to do: win the match, save the match or lose the match.

Even in the case of Paul Collingwood, the only man who played well, his whole approach was the opposite of the one he had used during his long vigil in Cape Town. There, he protected his wicket by playing with a short backlift. Here he took the bouncers on, a tactic that brought him runs but also threatened to get him out. You almost wondered whether England had had a team discussion and said: “Sooner or later, we are all going to get a good one, so we might as well attack and get what we can, while we can.”

We all want to support England but this display was unacceptable. If you bat badly, you lose Test matches – it’s as simple as that. Some of these players will go off to Bangladesh next month and make hay. They will be playing on flat pitches against county-standard attacks and fill their boots with runs, but who cares? It won’t mean a damn except for statistics.

I feel for James Anderson and the rest of the seamers, because you have to wonder how England will ever be able to play five bowlers while their batsmen are performing like that. Take Matt Prior for example: he twice got out hooking on a bouncy pitch. He may have improved his wicketkeeping, but his batting brains have gone out the window.

When you look at the side on paper, it looks promising, with runs all the way down to No 9. The trouble is that the batsmen can only cope on flat pitches where the ball doesn’t bounce too high.
The bowlers have done a good job in this series and never given up.

Unfortunately, they are always going to be knackered because the Test matches come one after the other with little rest. Without the option of dropping a batsman – which England daren’t do after the performances in South Africa – Anderson and company will always have too big a workload to share.

DON’T get sidetracked by the issue of the third umpire at the Wanderers. Yes, Daryl Harper made a cock-up by not adjusting the volume knob on Graeme Smith’s caught behind, but you can’t blame the Decision Review System for the result. Remember, the onfield umpire, Tony Hill, gave Smith not out on 15. So without the new technology, Smith would still have made a hundred. I don’t remember England complaining when Collingwood was reprieved first ball in Cape Town by the system. Without that lifeline, England would never have come close.

In this week’s podcast James Buttler talks to Geoffrey about Feng Shui and ball tampering. After a succession of exciting Test Matches he starts by suggesting that Test cricket has never been healthier…