mvaughan

In the end the West Indies put in a far more spirited and disciplined performance than many would have expected in the First Test. If the tail had added 30 or 40 more runs; if Kemar Roach had dismissed Ian Bell or Alastair Cook early on day five...who knows? But that may well have been Darren Sammy's best chance of avoiding a whitewash for his side. England let them back into the game on day four and I'm not too sure that's going to happen again. In Roach, the Windies have a classy speed merchant, a genuine threat with the new ball. And in Shivnarine Chanderpaul an outstanding batsman in all conditions who virtually guarantees the side runs. That's why he's the number one ranked Test batsman in the world. But beyond that there aren't really any outstanding performers. The other bowlers...

England are in a prime position to win this match, simple as that. I've never really had any concerns about the bowling; you'll have read me in this column saying England have the best Test bowling attack in the world. It's not often anyone scores more than 300 in a Test match against this bowling attack these days. The problem in recent months is that England have seldom come anywhere near to scoring that themselves! This time it looks like it's going to be a very different story. Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook went out with a good game-plan concerning the sort of run rate they were targeting and what they considered to be their scoring areas. Strauss will have been disappointed to not have gone on and scored 100 but him and Cook have set up a good platform and the middle-order...

England will ring the changes ahead of the Second Test, a match they need to win to level the Series and stop the rot. The first is an enforced one with Steve Finn the natural replacement for the injured Stuart Broad. Finn did well in the ODI matches against Pakistan, which were played on a similar sort of wicket to the one he'll find at Galle so there's no reason why he can't be successful again here. I'm also expecting Monty Panesar to give way with Tim Bresnan coming in for him. With all due respect to Monty, Bresnan is the far better fielder and batsman and will take Broad's place at eight with Finn probably batting down at eleven. Unlike in Galle, there won't be a breeze in Colombo so bowling quickly will be even more hard work than it was last week - a three-man pace attack looks ...

A cricket dressing room is a great place to be in when you're winning but a pretty miserable one when you've just been hammered. There will have been plenty of soul-searching amongst the England players as to what went wrong and plenty of work done by analysts and other background staff into why their batting line-up capitulated not once, but twice. No prizes for guessing which Pakistan bowler will have been the subject of the greatest amount of analysis. If England don't play Saeed Ajmal a lot better than they did in the First Test they're in big trouble but hopefully all this fancy technical equipment will help them work out where they went wrong last time. Chris Tremlett isn't fully fit so will miss out, although I suspect the Surrey paceman wouldn't have played anyway, even if he...

There were four obvious candidates for the man-of-the-match award at Lord's in the form of Kevin Pietersen, James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Matt Prior. I don't think anyone can argue with KP getting it after a double-century in tricky conditions but with an aggregate of 174 runs across the two innings plus five catches, one could have made a really good case for Prior. Especially when we recall that England were in total disarray when the Sussex man came to the crease. His brilliant century turned the game around and meant India were never in with a chance of chasing a score of over 400. How do we define Prior's role within the team? He's an all-rounder. When it comes to wicket-keepers I define them as that if I feel they're capable of batting somewhere in the top five. As it happens...

We're in profit for this Test series courtesy of England's superb win. None of our top batsman bets came good but a pre-match back of England at 3.5 plus another mid-match top-up at 2.7 ensured we have some winnings in the bank to re-invest for the second Test. There were endless positives to take from England's performance. The fact they took 20 wickets on a traditionally good batting track against arguably the best batting line-up in the world; the manner in which the bowlers worked together as a unit; and the way England fought back in their second innings from 62-5 down to post a target that India were never going to be able to chase. People will remember this match for Kevin Pietersen's double-century and England's bowling display on the last day but the passage of play in which Matt...

Jonathan Trott thoroughly deserves all the success and plaudits that have come his way since he first broke into the Test team. He's now the rightful owner of that crucial number three slot, an important member of the ODI team and this week he was rewarded for his efforts by being named England's Cricketer Of The Year. Seven hundred odd-runs in an Ashes Series would normally be enough to get you the award so Alastair Cook may feel a little hard-done by but Trott has also been very consistent in the 50-over format so few would argue he wasn't a deserved winner. The Warwickshire man is a good example of how hard work and consistently good performances on the County circuit can reap big rewards. You could make a good case for Andrew Strauss top scoring for England in the first innings...

We started the summer's tipping well and I've been racking my brains trying to think of a Test Match that I was involved in as a player that had the sort of late drama witnessed on Monday evening. The best I could come up with was when Marcus Trescothick and I had six overs to chase 50 in the final session of the 3rd Test in June 2002. Our opponents? Sri Lanka. We did it with an over to spare despite facing Muttiah Muralitharan when he was at his peak. And they say I wouldn't have made a good T20 player! Still, that wasn't a patch on what happened last week. Andy Flower said he thought England had about a 3% chance of bowling them out when they took to the field. He may be a great coach and was a fantastic batsman but he's no odds-compiler; England were matched at 1000.0 on Betfair at...

Ok, hands up all of you who really thought England were going to win the First Test when they finally got play under way yesterday afternoon. No, me neither. There's a reason why the layers were offering odds of 1,000 about England on Betfair at that stage and what we witnessed was one of the most unbelievable two sessions of cricket I've ever had the pleasure to watch. By the way, for those of you who did secure those monster prices about Andrew Strauss and his players being all smiles at the end of it all - make mine a double! But my column on Betting.Betfair did secure a nice profit nonetheless. We started by recommending a back-to-lay of the draw before the off at 2.66 with most of the profit saved on England and we topped that up by going with England at 4.8 (and laying off when...