Ashes 2013: England's batsmen need to improve The bowlers are quicker and you do not want to commit yourself forward in case they bowl you a short ball. But when they pitch it up you need to be able to transfer your weight and make a big stride forward to get near the pitch of the ball. He is getting caught on the crease. He is neither forward nor back. He is in no-man's-land, which means from when the ball pitches to when he plays it, it has much further to travel. If it moves off the pitch he is a candidate for nicking it to slip or the keeper. The idea is to get as near to the pitch of the ball as you can to reduce the distance it travels and can move. This was always my concern about him moving from the middle order to opening. When people say, "Hang on, he opens the batting for Yorkshire," I would argue that he does, but the bowling in international cricket is much better and usually a bit quicker. Therefore it exposes any weaknesses. For the moment he has lost the immaculate footwork he showed against New Zealand. It is footwork that makes batting. He has regressed. It is liable to happen with young kids. I do not know any 22-year-old who is the finished article. We all have precocious talent but we have to learn, gain experience and mature. He will be fine, trust me. I am a huge supporter. But the road to the top is not straightforward. I know he made 180 at Lord's. It was a wonderful innings. But if he had been caught on eight when the keeper did not move for it, his scores in this series would be 8, 13, 6, 8, 30 and 5. It does not look too clever without the 180. Kevin Pietersen came out firing. He was probably hot under the collar because of the fuss about Hot Spot. I, too, would have been bloody cross if they had inferred that I was cheating. But he played the non-spinning off-spinner with half a bat running it to third man. It was naive. You should hit the ball back from whence it came. The angle is around the wicket, wide on the crease so hit it back to mid-on or to the bowler. It is the safest shot in the book. Then Ian Bell played the worst shot of the whole innings. Here is one of our top batsmen in the form of his life. The team was in trouble. They needed him to stick around in the final session. But what did he do? He had sat on his bum having a cuppa and a cream cake during the tea interval. But four balls after the interval he tried to smack the off spinner over the top. It was a recipe for disaster. He is probably so confident and full of himself he thought, "I have got runs, I can do anything and I won't get dropped." I am telling you if he had played that shot at Yorkshire in the 1960s when Brian Close was captain he might have got a bunch of fives for it. It was a thoughtless act. Jonny Bairstow hung on while Australia were strangling the innings, bowling maidens and waiting for the new ball. Having nearly got through that with three overs to the new ball he tried to sweep the off-spinner pitching on middle stump. To compound it he even reviewed the decision when it was knocking middle stump out of the ground. You have to think better than that at this level. It is not just about talent. It is about using your brain. We have to start doing better than this. We cannot go on hoping the bowlers will get us out of trouble or the opposition bat poorly. How many times have I said that when you bat well, you control the game? Our bowlers will win matches, but it should not be an uphill struggle for them all the time to get the batsmen out of a big mess.