England can bounce back from Dubai collapse, insists Strauss

The captain will deliver that assessment again to his team as they try to come to terms with a 10-wicket defeat inside three days in the first Test at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium.

England were twice bowled out for under 200 on a perfectly decent pitch, and Pakistan needed under four overs of their second innings to complete the formality which took them 1-0 up with two to play in this series.

For England, a first Test defeat since Perth more than a year ago raises long-held doubts about whether, No 1 team or not, they have what it takes to succeed here in the Middle East or on the sub-continent.

It was a sixth defeat in their last seven international matches for an England team rightly lauded last summer for their Test exploits after a sixth consecutive series win took them past India to the top of the International Cricket Council rankings.

Strauss made no attempt to dodge the issue of poor batting in both innings, principally against Saeed Ajmal, who finished with 10 wickets in the match, and then Umar Gul.

“We’re all slightly surprised by how things turned out,” said Strauss.

“We got caught off guard in that first session on the first day, on a very flat wicket.

“From then on, Pakistan were always in front and never let us back into the game... and they thoroughly deserved their victory.

“We’re very disappointed with the way we batted in both innings, primarily the first – because it wasn’t a 50-for-five wicket on day one.”

Several England batsmen, Strauss included in the first innings, contributed significantly to their own downfall.

The captain acknowledges that, but believes there is a right and wrong time to tell batsmen home truths.

“When a guy’s just come in, having played a bad shot, you don’t expect your team-mates to be jumping up and down telling you what a terrible shot you’ve just played,” he said.

“But what is important is you don’t run away from facts, and the truth.

“As individual batsmen, we’ve got to be honest and say, ‘Did we play well enough, was our gameplan smart enough, were we switched on enough?’,”

Between their batting failures, England bowled well to restrict Pakistan to 338 and Strauss contends there is no sense in over-reacting to one setback.

“I think at times like this the easy thing to do is look at everything that was wrong,” he said.

“As a side, it’s important we keep connected with the fact we’ve done a lot of good things over the last two years and will continue to do so.”

England had no answer to Ajmal in particular, though.

“With a bowler like that, the first 12 or 18 balls you face are when you are at your most vulnerable,” said Strauss.

“The key for the batsmen is not to give their wickets away – which is probably what we did a little bit too much in this Test match.

“The fact that a couple of us contributed to our own downfall allowed him to put even more pressure on the batsmen coming in.”

After Perth, England recovered their composure quickly to win both in Melbourne and then Sydney on the way to a historic Ashes success.

“That’s a good template to use,” added Strauss.

“We treated it as an aberration in Perth, and it would be right for us to treat this as an aberration as well – as long as we make sure we don’t repeat those mistakes.”

Strauss clearly did not think he had hit the ball when given out caught-behind in the morning, a verdict confirmed on DRS.

But he said: “It was of little consequence in the outcome of the game.

“I personally believe that the DRS system means that there are fewer errors made. But there’s going to be no system in place where every decision is 100 per cent right.

“That’s a fact of life, and you deal with it.”

His opposite number, Misbah-ul-Haq, had no such disappointments to ponder.

“It was a wonderful performance by our bowlers, and Saeed’s great variations brought the mistakes,” the Pakistan captain said, adding that qualms voiced by former England captain Bob Willis about the legality of the off-spinner’s action are wide of the mark.

“He’s cleared by the ICC. They’ve checked his action, and he’s been playing for a long time in international cricket. I think you should just admit that he’s a good bowler.”

Pakistan’s crushing superiority here meant it was hard to believe England are officially the best team in the world.

Strauss sees that fact as an irrelevance, in any case, to the tourists’ chances of fighting back in Abu Dhabi next week.

He said: “It’s just not time for us to be worrying about No 1 rankings, or anything like that.

“What we need to do is make sure we don’t play this type of cricket in the next Test match.

“We’re a very tight unit. You win together; you lose together; you move on. This is an opportunity for us to show our resilience. I know we’ve got it in abundance – but we’ve got to go out there and show that now.”