You've been extremely gentle on Cook in that rather simplistic assessment. Surely he'd have to take some of the load for the mental frailty as the series went on?
I'm not trying to gloss over the fact that we've come third in a two-horse race this winter, and yes I am simplifying (but that's what happens when you're posting at 5:22am having sat through it for six hours. It's no more simplistic, however that any of the analysis that has either proclaimed us to be on a different level following the 3-0 ("4-0") win in the summer, nor the bunch of incompetents that we are being painted as following the current shellacking.
It's very, very easy to slate sportsmen after a defeat, and to come up with reasons after the event for why things are not going well, but this game, by its very nature, is far more complicated than that. It's a whole lot more difficult to come up with a cogent plan of action to take things forward; so far I've not seen anything deeper than demands to sack Cook and Flower, as well as dropping half of the side. We got rid of Matt Prior mid-series because he was "not good enough"/"underperforming" and instead we got somebody who is neither close to being good enough with bat nor gloves, and if we follow some of the suggestions going around in the threads I've read (Buttler? Taylor? Mills?) we'll get exactly the same. We've had a run of several years as one of the best teams in the world with this personnel and under this management, and they're not stupid. They know they've underperformed; they know this is well below the standards that we as supporters and they as players want to achieve, and they've done enough in the last years to deserve patience when the wheels come off.
Why were we mentally exhausted? Schedule must have something to do with it; the human psyche can't continue to function when it's down and beaten and when it has no time to recover and recuperate. Swann's departure is symbolic of that. Flower is continuing; he is as aware as the rest of us that this team was second best, and he gives the indications that he's ready to lead the rebuilding into the next England unit. Some players will need more cricket - and the Lions tour - others will need a total break. Those calling for Cook's head need to present an alternative. Australia have got inside our heads and we've had nowhere to go; this was a whitewash that was coming the moment Brisbane came to its undignified end.
I am not for a moment saying we bury our heads in the sand and carry on as we are: selection (Finn, Tremlett, Rankin), the effect of the specialist coaches Saker and Gooch, whose effect seems to have gone stale since the halcyon summer of 2011, captaincy and particularly field placing and strategy were flawed, but they didn't want to lose. They didn't stop trying - why would they stop trying? - they were just battered, bruised, beaten and broken. They don't become bad players overnight, though, and they deserve the chance to build again.
