CHRISTMAS TURKEY FROM ENGLAND

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Warne - grabbed the headlines.

By Frank Malley, PA Chief Sports Writer

Predictably it was Shane Warne day on Boxing Day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

But if the sight of Warne filling his boots with English wickets to become the first bowler to take 700 wickets in Test cricket summed up Australia's superiority in this benighted series, then England once more have only themselves to blame.

Thousands of England fans had travelled to the fourth Test in hope of witnessing some passion and pride from a side which had performed so poorly in surrendering the Ashes before Christmas.

They received more of the same. No fight. No application. Dreadful batting. And the sort of weak leadership which is becoming as inevitable and as depressing as tax in their pay packets.

Nothing summed up the latter quite as much as the sight of Kevin Pietersen once again running out of partners as he scrambled desperately for runs amid the tail-enders as England's first innings struggled to 159 all out.

There have been some poor decisions on this tour. The decision to declare in the first innings in Adelaide was one. The absence of Monty Panesar in the first two Tests was another.

Put the perplexing decision of captain Andrew Flintoff to bat, rather than bowl on a damp wicket in cold conditions perfectly suited to English seamers in Melbourne, down as yet another.

But nothing demonstrates the woolly thinking and the lack of generalship more than the plight of Pietersen.

Batting Pietersen at number five is a bit like Sir Alex Ferguson playing Wayne Rooney in a defensive holding position.

Sports teams with ambitions of greatness do not hide away their most destructive players. They put them in positions where they can exert maximum damage to the opposition.

Too often this series Pietersen has come in, only for his natural belligerence to be hampered by having to protect lesser batsmen around him.

He has received conflicting messages from the dressing room. Refused singles. True, he has made a century and a couple of half centuries but too often he has appeared in a straitjacket of confusion, uncertain whether to attack or defend when his instinct is to be single-minded.

He should be playing at least at number four and preferably number three, where Australia's best batsman Ricky Ponting plays, and from where Pietersen could build the really big innings England have been lacking.

The word is that Pietersen himself wants to stay at five because that is where he has always batted.

If that is the case then it is another example of coach Duncan Fletcher buckling to player power when strong direction, dictatorship even, is needed.

In winning teams the players always put the team above the individual. That has been the case with Australia and not with England on this tour of grumbling bowlers, out-of-sorts batsmen and non-existent leaders.

Yes, Warne is special and five wickets on a seamer's paradise would appear to say it all as England fell from 100 for two to 159 all out.

Except that, apart from Andrew Strauss who was bowled by a beautiful piece of flight and spin, the rest of England's batsmen chose the wrong pitch on which to be over-aggressive.

The result? Another England performance as unpalatable as three-day old turkey.