Awful. Just embarrassingly awful. I remember vividly after the last Ashes tour that it was generally agreed that we needed to start planning straight away what type of bowlers and batsmen we needed in order to be competitive in Oz. That was 4 years ago. 4 FCKN years.
What have we ended up with?
Fckn seam bowlers bowing offspin, and our no.s 3 & 4 batsmen also bowling spin....because we left our spinner on the bench...on an established spin receptive deck....because he got mullered after being selected to play on a green seamer the match before....having had next to no match practice the preceding year.
And batters whose County experience has been at the (No Swearing Please) ends of the UK summer when octogenarian 65mph seamers can take their wickets whenever they feel like it.
I don't blame the players. I feel they are trying their best, in general their best being below their competitor's level (because of the above).
I do blame the management team specifically and the top of the ECB in general. If they managed a business, they'd be bankrupt by now. Fck all of them. Ruining it for us. Useless cnuts.
Edited to add more swear words related to the time the management team had to sort things out.