The repeated failures of England's world-class batsmen against Pakistan have left England captain Andrew Strauss and team director Andy Flower still searching for answers as to what exactly has gone wrong.
The 71-run defeat and 3-0 series whitewash against Pakistan came in alien conditions against spin - Saeed Ajmal and Abdur Rehman have shared a colossal 43 wickets - and no frontline England batsman has managed to average even 30.
Flower told Sky Sports 1: "(We spent a) couple of months out of the game and not doing a lot, while Pakistan were beating Sri Lanka and working hard to beat Bangladesh, and that hardened them up for this contest."
He added: "Looking back, I don't think we were ready. I shoulder that side of the blame, because it was my decision to give them that time off. We won't let that happen again.
"Certainly during that rest time our team and support staff were all being lauded, and while that was happening, Pakistan were working hard at their game and beating international opposition.
"Consequently one side was sharp and ready and one side wasn't and we've got to do something about that."
Strauss senses England's troubles are not necessarily a result of their autumn inactivity, and the solutions ought still to be in their own hands.
"If you keep getting bowled out for 140 or 150 you're not going to win many Test matches," he said. "I haven't been involved in a series where so many of our batsmen have had such a hard time.
"We've all got questions to answer and a bit of soul-searching to put into how we can do things better. We're all proud players, we're all asking ourselves the same question.
"But I've got great faith in our batsmen, I think they're some of the best batsmen in the world."
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Flowers has lost it - he was so ambigious it's untrue!! Credit to him he eventually agreed to shoulder some of the blame. Everyone in the team should take responsibility. When your on the top - the only way is down!
I think Flower has lost the plot one minute he is saying his players are tired little bunnies the next he is saying they have had too much rest you can't have it both ways.These players are mean't to be highly trained athletes who are paid well they play in the most leisurely game apart from bowls and should be able to stand the so called pace.I think what we need is a coach for the future not one who is stuck selecting his out of Africa chums we need someone now is going to select the young players coming through but with Flower still in charge this is never going to happen.
I fully agree with Andy Flower. England were not ready. Full stop. I am sure this won't happen again. England will come out of this a much better and stronger side.
Excuses,excuses, Flower.
These are the supposed No.1s in the world, natural players selected for their competence. Lose the first test through rustiness, Ok, to lose the remaining two through incompetence is inexcusable.
Pathetic, abject, apalling - any other words to describe the shambles???
Strauss says: "they're some of the best batsmen in the world." England showed nothing of the calibre that Strauss is talking about. I think, they have to go back to the basics.
Yesterday, Mudassar Nazar was heard saying that England batsmen, when practicing against machine generated spin, wanted to hit the ball out of the park . In other words, they didn't want to learn how to kill the spin. Instead, they slogged the ball all over, knowing of course that they weren't going to get caught. Here, I'm talking about the mind-set. I believe we need to take each game on it's merit and stop being too concerned about the ranking. Each and every England player has to work harder on his game - nothing more nothing less.
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