England's bowling headache

England leave Edgbaston with a gritty draw and a bowling headache. One-hundred and seventy-one overs, 728 runs and only nine wickets equals a big problem.

Though the pitch was slow, it not as totally lifeless as it looked when England were bowling. Plenty of balls skidded through low or seamed, but the pace attack wasn't straight enough. Plenty of rough was created outside the right-handers' leg stump, but Ashley Giles didn't have the subtlety to exploit it. In this Test, England took a wicket every 114 balls, a strike rate only a shade better than Graham Gooch managed in a career bowling the dibbliest of occasional dibbly-dobbbers.

Look harder and the problem is worse than it first appears. In the first innings, two wickets fell to tired swats that were caught on the boundary (Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs), one huge attempted cut caught at third man (Jacques Rudolph), and one to a struggling batsman trying to get on with it (Boeta Dippenaar). Only Gary Kirsten's leg-side nick could be considered a proper wicket, and that came off a bad ball from Giles.

Of today's dimissals only Kirsten, again, was a genuine triumph for the bowler. Gibbs was bowled courtesy of a deflection off his elbow, and Smith and Rudolph perished giving Giles the charge. The net result is that only two or three of the wickets England took were not as down to South Africa's search for quick runs.

Darren Gough's usual zip was missing, Steve Harmison could still not turn promising moments into consistent menace, and Ashley Giles and Andrew Flintoff did what they are in the team to do: block up an end. Impotent was not the right word.

Not only did England lack a cutting edge, they also lacked a Plan B. In recent series, and in particular in 2001-02 against India, Nasser Hussain has quickly reverted to packing he off side, instructing his bowlers to bowl a foot outside off and waiting for the batsmen to make a mistake.

But here England lacked the discipline to bowl on one side of the wicket. Anderson was the prime offender. Though he did finally manage a wicket, it was from one of very few decent balls he bowled. On Sunday morning he was out on the pitch before play bowling into a corridor of cones in a desperate attempt to hone his line and length. For once he looked what he is - a novice.

Never was England's desire for a frightening quick bowler or a mystery spinner more keenly felt. But a quick glance at the county averages shows no obvious solution. The two leading wicket-takers who are eligible for England - James Kirtley and Jimmy Ormond - offer more consistency but less potency than Anderson. And the only mystery spinner in sight is Mushtaq Ahmed.