Top-order trapeze act puts England in peril

Like a trapeze artist learning to live without a safety net, England found at Lord's that Joe Root will not always be able to conceal the cracks in their top order.

There will be days - maybe quite a few days - when England get away with a poor start. With Root looking as if he may develop into a top player and Moeen Ali batting as low as No. 8, there will be times when the middle order are able to help the team rebuild from the loss of three early wickets. There will be times when they get away with it. Times when they have a safety net.

But not always. No team, however deep the batting and however able the middle-order, can afford to find themselves three down as often as England have in recent times. No team can afford to have such a fragile opening partnership and no team can be overly reliant on one man.

Root's form in the last year or so has been exceptional: 1,513 runs at an average of 79.63 since June 2014. His stroke here - a waft that spoke of a mind scrambled by five sessions in the field, a huge deficit and a bowler of unusual pace - was unworthy of him, but he is human and he is 24. These things happen.

England's real issue is that so few of his colleagues seem able to fill the void when Root fails. England's real issue is that he cannot mask all their flaws.

Only three times in 13 innings since the start of the Caribbean tour have England gone past 75 two wickets down or less. On six occasions, the score had not even reached 50 before the third wicket fell. Only three times have England put on more than 17 for the first wicket.

All too often, England are starting their innings from the fragile foundation of 10 for 1 and 50 for 3. All too often, England's middle order are exposed to the new ball. All too often, they are obliged to do the job of the top order. They will not always be able to shoulder such a burden. If England are to win the Investec Ashes, they will need the entire team to contribute.

And remember, had Brad Haddin caught Root at Cardiff before he had scored, England would have been 43 for 4 and the weakness would have been exposed even more visibly. They got away with it on that occasion. It is foolish to think such fortune will continue to flow.

This was an unsettling evening from an England perspective. The apparent air of resignation that hung around Lord's as England bowled for five sessions was suddenly transformed into something urgent and desperate when Australia bowled. Perhaps it was superior skill, perhaps it was superior belief, perhaps it was a combination of physical weariness and scoreboard pressure, but whereas Australia had accumulated with calm assurance, England looked rattled and hurried when they began their reply.

Reasoning that they had one opportunity to seize this match, Australia went hard at England with the new ball. And if a somnambulant Lord's was still half asleep when the innings began, it was wide awake after Adam Lyth, looking shaken by the sudden increase in intensity, was drawn into a waft at a wide delivery. Suddenly England looked tense and Australia scented blood. Suddenly there was just a hint of the Gabba about Lord's.

While it would be premature to drop Lyth - it is only five Test innings since he made a century against a strong New Zealand attack - this was not the stroke of a Test opening batsman. He will face far more hostile environments, far less docile pitches. One score above 37 in seven Test innings - and four below 13 - does not bode well.

England have not had a really effective opening partnership since Andrew Strauss retired. Or some time before that, really, as Strauss made only three centuries in the final three years of his career and did not make a half-century in his final eight innings. Nick Compton (with an average 31.93 from nine Tests) came closest to making the role his own but he was deemed not to be the sort of character some in the management wanted and was afforded little patience after three successive poor Tests. There are few better defenders of fast bowling in the county game, though.

Sam Robson could come again but he appears to be a player in development. And decent batsmen though the likes of Varun Chopra, Mark Stoneman and Alex Lees are, to throw them in against this attack would be a asking a great deal of them. It is at such times, then, that England need their senior players to deliver.

Ian Bell looked aghast the pitch when he was bowled, but he would have been better served looking at his technique. While Bell was undoubtedly the victim of a lovely piece of bowling - a full ball swung wonderfully late - he will reflect from the replays that his attempt to whip it through midwicket hardly gave him the best chance of negating the movement. The game may have changed in many ways, but the old adage about playing with the full face of the bat and into the V remains as relevant now as ever.

Bell is often talked of as having the best technique in the England side. But it is a basic tenet of the game that the new ball is better played straight than with an angled bat. For an experienced player who had just seen his side's No. 3 bowled by a late-swinging ball, his was a poor stroke. He has now reached 30 once in 11 innings and, on seven of those occasions, failed to pass 1. Of equal concern is the fact that, in those 11 innings, he has now been bowled four times. Coming during a game when he dropped a tricky but vital chance in the slips, the pressure on him is growing.

And then there is Gary Ballance. His dismissal here, deep in the crease and unable to negate late swing that hit his off stump, was somewhat familiar. While the facile answer to his issues would be to convince him to play further forward, such an apparent solution would create several other technical problems. In short, it would weaken one of his strengths: the ability to minimise his dismissals edging to the slip cordon by remaining admirably compact and not pushing at the ball.

In mitigation, he really did receive a very fine ball. Full and quick to take this docile pitch out of the equation, it swung late enough to beat Ballance's tentative prod.

But his problem may be more basic. If he studies replays of his dismissal, he may conclude that he is not watching the ball on to the bat as closely as he thinks. He need only study Chris Rogers' method - and Lord knows he has had plenty of opportunity in recent days - to understand how top-order batsmen watch the ball right on to their bat.

One option would be to promote Root to No. 3. He did open in the last Ashes series in England, after all. That would, at least, allow him to prevent such collapses rather than rebuild after them. England could also bring in another batsman - the likes of Jonny Bairstow or James Taylor - for the middle-order role. But it would also weaken a considerable strength in this England side. Root averages 33.53 batting in the top three and 65.50 from positions four to seven.

Whatever happens over the next three days at Lord's, England can no longer ignore the mountain of evidence that is building about the top order. They cannot ask for slower wickets. They cannot squeeze any more batsmen into their XI. There have been too many failures to dismiss it as an aberration.