Though it was 90 disastrous minutes in the field that led to England losing control of the second Test against India, it was their calamitous attempt to bat out the match which will provoke the most debate as Chris Silverwood convenes his selection committee on Tuesday night, with England’s head coach admitting that the repeated failures of top-order batsmen are an issue that he now “has to address”. England, turbocharged by Joe Root’s unbeaten 180, scored 391 in their first innings, but across the match they also registered seven ducks including – for the first time on home soil – both openers in the same innings on that wild final afternoon. Among top- and middle-order batsmen across the past 12 months of all Test-playing nations only Zimbabwe and Afghanistan average more ducks per match than England. While Root is in the batting form of his life, averaging 65.30 across 21 innings over the past year, the rest of England’s top seven are collectively averaging only 20.40, less than half of New Zealand’s 42.42 and by a margin the worst record in the world. The problem is most significant at the top of the order and it is telling that across four Tests this summer Root has had to strap on his pads and head out to bat with England’s score at an average of 34.5 while New Zealand and India have averaged 84.9 before losing a second wicket. With England’s opening partnership averaging just 15.90 over the last year and the second‑wicket partnership just 15.38, patience has worn thin and it seems almost certain that Dom Sibley will finally pay with his place for repeated failures. “It’s certainly something we’ll talk about,” Silverwood said of Sibley’s future. “As I’ve said all along, I’d rather give somebody one too many chances than not enough, and we have invested in people, we have given people plenty of opportunity. Clearly I don’t want to go in and start ripping things up but at some point we have to think about manoeuvring things a little bit to try to find a better balance when something’s not working. “We talk about making big partnerships and in the first innings we almost got that right. In the second innings obviously we didn’t and we have to address that. I know the batting coaches are working hard with the players. There isn’t any lack of effort – the guys have trained well, they’ve trained hard but at some point we’ve got to say the runs have got to be put on the board.” England’s problems are compounded by domestic scheduling. With the peak weeks of the summer dedicated to the Royal London One-Day Cup, the Vitality Blast and the Hundred, the most recent County Championship fixtures were more than a month ago. The names of Dawid Malan and James Vince will certainly be debated at the selectors’ meeting but Malan has played only one first-class innings all summer (he did, to be fair, score 199) while Vince has not touched a red ball in anger since the first week of July. Any player added to the Test squad faces a monumental shift of emphasis and atmosphere before a heated third Test against one of the finest sides in the world. “It’s not ideal, but equally we don’t live in an ideal world at the moment with Covid and everything else that’s been thrown at us,” Silverwood said. “I don’t think there’s an ideal process out there. We’ve got to make the best of what we’ve got and find solutions to what’s in front of us, and that’s what we’re doing to the best of our abilities. “To bring people in from say the Hundred or the Royal London or whichever competition they’re playing at the time and throw them into Test cricket … we’ve seen the pressure is huge in this series, it’s being played with a lot of passion, which is great to see, but it’s a difficult transition. “If people do come in we’ve got to work hard to get them up to speed quickly. None of it’s ideal but from my point of view I understand the situation we’re in, and there are a lot of people working hard to make the best of it.” One person who will not be receiving a phone call from Silverwood any time soon is Ben Stokes, who is taking an indefinite break from cricket to prioritise his mental well-being. “There’s no time limit on it,” he said. “The important thing is that Ben is OK, his family are OK and that, when he re-enters the frame, he’s ready in his mind to come back and perform for England like we know he can. “I’m certainly not pushing him for an answer. I don’t think that would be the right thing to do. There’s going to be an element of me waiting for him to come to me to let me know he’s ready.”