Pietersen malaise sums up the humiliation, writes Sportsmail's Mike Dickson

Three wickets: Stuart Clark
14 April 2012

Nobody personified the unravelling of England in this Test series more than Kevin Pietersen did.

Hitherto a beacon of resistance against this rampant Australia team, the tourist's best batsman finally decided that he ought to revert to the number four position in the middle of this latest humiliation and lasted just nine deliveries.

The failure of such a strategic move between the first and second innings symbolised the breaking of England by ferociously powerful opposition.

Everyone from Shane Warne to Nasser Hussain to any backpacking England supporter had advocated the shift, and it came to pass when all was lost.

Again, as in the case of Monty Panesar's selection, it seems that the away dressing room was the last place in the cricketing world to decide upon the wisdom of the move.

The timing of it was a clear signal of how the tourists have been reduced to groping around in the dark, and was duly taken as yet another moral victory for the hosts.

Andrew Flintoff said afterwards that the change was at Pietersen's instigation and that they were happy to accomodate it, with Adelaide's double centurion Paul Collingwood the man to be demoted.

Pietersen's demeanour in this Test has been that of a man who has given it everything and is at a loss to fathom how he can give much more in a cause that has long since disappeared.

His body language in the outer has been markedly more languid than the energy-giver who sprinted around at Brisbane and he has carried with him the sense of a man apart.

He was definitely that on Christmas Day at lunch when he chose to dine with his fiance and friends rather than the majority of the team and their families.

It has been emphasised that attendance at the meal was not compulsory, but that is in itself unusual and suggests a lack of clear leadership.

The squad are unlikely to be altogether as a group on New Year's Eve either and the vast, unwieldy nature of this England caravan is now being matched by a lack of cohesion on the field, as shown in this innings and 99-run rout after winning the toss.

It was not just in the batting, which saw Andrew Strauss top scorer with 31 and ten wickets go down for 120 runs yesterday once Alastair Cook was out.

The bowling was far too short on a seaming wicket and the field settings too defensive, the impression of a team in disarray compounded by the embarassing loss of the tourists' plans for each batsmen by a member of England's huge support staff.

Yesterday was the point of the series, remember, when it was hoped there would be questions about whether Shane Warne or Glenn McGrath could last the pace of a shoehorned schedule.

In fact the only shoehorning going on yesterday was when Andrew Symonds and Matthew Hayden tried to wedge the spinner's considerable buttocks between their heads onto their shoulders to carry him aloft from the MCG for the last time.

Next week it will be New South Welshman McGrath's turn to get the hometown farewell treatment, and it is desperately hard to see how the bystanding tourists will avoid the Baggy Greenwash.

For all England's problems, some self-imposed, it is necessary to salute the phenomenal performance of Australia.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, and they are feasting on a buffet that was laid out for them all of fifteen months ago.

There has been poor decision-making on this tour among their opposition but this team is not among the worst England vintages of all time, and they are going the same way of so many international sides before them when facing Australia at home.

Nobody has won a series here since McGrath and Warne have been together and after Alec Stewart's team lost 3-1 in 1998-9 the home side's Test record reads played 48, lost two, drawn seven and won 38.

Of the two defeats, one was by India when both the great bowlers were absent and one was by Hussain's England four years ago when they were 4-0 up and some complacency had set in.

What really is of numbing disappointment under the leadership of Flintoff - itself among the current problems - is that there is sufficient quality in this side to put up more resistance than seen in this kind of defeat inside three days.

There is still a shortfall in calibre of player between the two teams - indeed the two cricket cultures - that runs deep.

The whole of English cricket cannot, for example, produce someone like Stuart Clark who exhibits the virtues of line and length so consistently and thinks intelligently with it.

If you want a full-time sports scientist though, as Warwickshire have just employed, England is the place to be.

Flintoff's men were in this particular game at 101-2 in the first innings and then having Australia 84-5, but powerless to stop the runaway partnership of Symonds and Hayden.

The extent to which that had knocked the puff out of them became clear yesterday.

Going into the Fifth Test we still await an opening partnership over fifty. Cook should have gone on eleven but umpire Rudi Koertzen, who had a disgracefully bad match and contributed much to England's suffering, turned down McGrath's utterly compelling appeal.

He gave out Ian Bell when it was marginal soon after and the dreaded three-day finish was in the offing.

Pietersen looked unsafe from the start and the one virtue of his innings that there was no kamikaze run to get off the mark, another striking feature of him in this series.

Collingwood got too frustrated after his runs dried up and Strauss, who has been suffering from flu symptoms, finally waved his bat once too often at Brett Lee, who was outstanding all day

Flintoff's runs were, like all those he has made in this series, meaningless, and although Chris Read survived until the end his cluelessness early on did not argue much against Duncan Fletcher's lack of belief in him.

It was a miserable procession, and there is little question that even jingoistic Australians are disappointed at the lack of a contest.

The MCG, which had nearly 80,000 in yesterday, deserved far better from its visiting team and will have lost at least £2 million from staging a match so truncated.

But then this remains, for now, an exceptional Australian unit. England, with Steve Harmison firing so irregularly, Simon Jones injured, Michael Vaughan absent and Flintoff struggling, are far from that.

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