No honour in this draw . . .

THERE ARE certain circumstances in which celebrating a draw is allowable.

A fine golf shot, say, in which your ball bends around a tree-lined dog-leg to land bang in the middle of the fairway.

Or a Lotto result in which your numbers come out — until you realise you actually forgot to put them on this week as you were too busy watching cricket, at which point your face clenches up and goes as funny a colour as Ricky Ponting’s did when confronted by a heavily-bearded man proffering a pair of gloves for the second time.

But despite all the jubilation after the heroic and hugely undervalued Paul Collingwood and chums had managed to sneak home with the scoreless draw intact on Sunday, it is important to keep in mind the fact that England were — to borrow a David Lloyd phrase used in similar circumstances when the boot was on the other foot — “absolutely murdered” by the Aussies in Cardiff.

It really isn’t worth jumping up and down about it all.

Some lusty blows at the bottom end of the first innings can’t disguise the fact that many of England’s batsmen threw their wickets away far too carelessly on the way to a par total of 435.

Kevin Pietersen’s dismissal was a case in point. A fetch that came from so far outside off stump he almost needed a taxi to get there, it resulted in our best bat trotting off after not so much handing his wicket to Nathan Hauritz — a spinner viewed by Geoffrey Boycott as being so innocuous his dear-departed mother would have seen him out of the attack — as gift-wrapping it inside a lavender-filled box.

But to focus solely on KP would be to ignore the other rank shots in a needlessly frantic batting display, the lack of any application of pressure by a woeful bowling attack, and the bland and inadequate captaincy of Andrew Strauss.

Ravi Bopara suddenly looks extremely vulnerable at number three in the order, as does Alistair Cook up top. The two spinners, Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar, offered very little in terms of dangerous moments too, picking up one wicket between them as opposed to Hauritz’s six, while Stuart Broad seems to be too gentle a soul for this testosterone-fuelled battle.

Escaping with a draw was a miracle, but England’s players shouldn’t now think they are capable of turning water into Shiraz.