England's big wake-up call - Harmison and Cook offer hope of revival

England face six Tests away and at home against New Zealand in the next six months in two series which they really must win if they are to convince us that their words are not simply hollow.

Taking the positives: Steve Harmison (left) bowled well after returning from injury, which will have pleased his captain Michael Vaughan (centre), as will the form of Alastair Cook (right) who top scored for England in the series

For coach Peter Moores, eight months after stepping into Duncan Fletcher's shoes, the honeymoon is not exactly over but he is clearly experiencing the first ripples of tension in his cricketing marriage. The statistics do not make happy reading.

After losing this series 1-0 and only surviving a worse drubbing because of rain that has been as constant a presence as Mahela Jayawardene at the crease throughout this short, sharp tour, England relinquished their proud grip on their ranking as the second best team in the world, tumbling in an instant to fifth.

They have won just one of their last 14 overseas Tests, have been victorious in just two of their last eight series and have lost two Test series in succession for the first time in six years.

Time for a wake-up call, perhaps? Moores rightly said, after a combination of the monsoon-like weather and Alastair Cook's reassuring solidity had somehow saved England from defeat in the third Test on Saturday, that he would wait until the dust had settled before making judgments on where England go from here.

Yet he would be wise not to dismiss the words of the Sri Lankan captain too readily in what is sure to be a painful inquest.

Jayawardene is both a world-class batsman and an impressive character off the pitch. He is no Arjuna Ranatunga, seeking confrontation wherever he can find it, and he has led Sri Lanka both intelligently and with a tactical acumen that is usually the preserve of Michael Vaughan.

So when he delivers a damning indictment of the basic game-plan that England never properly executed — that of scoring 500 runs and putting pressure on the opposition on flat wickets — then Moores and Vaughan really should take note.

"If you want to compete, especially away from home, you have to be more positive than they have been," said Jayawardene after lifting his team to third place in the world rankings behind Australia and South Africa.

"You can't go into a Test series in such a negative frame of mind, thinking, "These are not our conditions, we cannot force the pace."

"We didn't think they were actually pushing for a win in the second Test in Colombo even though they were one down. They were just trying to survive. We wanted to win the series more than they did."

It was an assessment that Moores dismissed as unfair when defending England's attritional tactics. He preferred to believe that Sri Lanka simply played the better cricket and had two batsmen in Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara who provided the application and sheer hunger seemingly lacking among England's hugely-talented but underperforming top five.

Jayawardene's assessment, however, has more than a ring of legitimacy about it when you consider that England really did have their chances in this series.

They were ill-equipped to take them, either through a collective mental weakness or not actually believing that they could seize the initiative when it was presented to them and go on to win.

It was felt beforehand that the first Test in Kandy would provide England's best chance and that it would be the perfect venue for them to launch the series before they had to travel to the Sri Lankan strongholds of Colombo and Galle.

So it proved. When Matthew Hoggard reduced Sri Lanka to 42 for five on the first day of the series and then 188 all out the Test and, in all probability, the series was stretched out tantalisingly in front of England.

But they just could not grab it, batting poorly in reply when faced with Muttiah Muralitharan and his world record on his home pitch. They slipped to an agonising defeat and from there were playing catch up.

Yet, Vaughan played as well as he can ever have done in the second Test in Colombo to give England the perfect launch pad but again contrived to get out before reaching three figures.

Then England's bowlers were condemned to toil away for hour after hour on a pitch that became more soul destroying as the match went on.

Jayawardene felt the dismissal of Vaughan for 87, somehow caught at short leg between Jehan Mubarak's knees when well set, was the moment the series slipped away from England.

From then on they were in too negative a frame of mind to compete. It is hard to argue. The wheels well and truly fell off in Galle when England played as poorly at times as they have done for years.

But maybe we can partially excuse them on the basis of a gruelling schedule that forced them to play three back-to-back Tests in the most demanding conditions in world cricket.

No, it was at Kandy where this series was there for England to take and they could not take it.

This will leave chairman David Graveney to oversee some ticklish decisions when picking what might be his last England squad, bearing in mind that interviews for the new position of national selector start on January 7.

Few England players returned home for Christmas yesterday with their reputations enhanced. Matt Prior, Ravi Bopara and Jimmy Anderson will be more anxious than most when Graveney reads out the names of the tourists to New Zealand at Lord's on January 4.

Andrew Strauss, for all his poor form in the last year which led to his exclusion here, is looking a better player by the day again.

There are exceptions and Alastair Cook will celebrate his 23rd birthday on Christmas Day having scored more Test hundreds — seven — by that tender age than all bar Don Bradman and Sachin Tendulkar.

England's top order is in safe hands for many years to come. But perhaps the biggest positive to come from this tour — and England do so like to take positives from even the worst defeat — is the return of Steve Harmison.

The Durham fast bowler showed something like the pace and bounce that once made him the best fast bowler in the world.

His figures may not suggest that the days of seven for 12 against the West Indies are on the verge of being repeated but Harmison came here with his career at the top level very much at the crossroads.

He returns home, hopefully, ready to lead England's attack again and for that small mercy we can be extremely grateful.