England skipper Michael Vaughan said his side needed to regain their togetherness and unity after selection changes upset morale and their closeness as a team.
England were forced to leave out injured bowler Ryan Sidebottom before the game, star all-rounder Andrew Flintoff came back in, regular middle-order batsman Paul Collingwood was dropped after going more than a year without a century and little-known Darren Pattinson was a leftfield pick ahead of the more experienced Matthew Hoggard, Steve Harmison and Simon Jones.
“I’ll be sitting down this week and be discussing areas we can improve,” Vaughan told reporters. “There are obviously areas we can and hopefully we can find a side that can beat South Africa at Edgbaston.
“We didn’t feel as much as a unit this week as we did the week before. I have a huge belief that we need to be a unit in Test match cricket and have that togetherness. Two changes don’t help.
“Over the next week it’s important the guys get away and work and come back to the squad on Sunday and react like we did at Lord’s and get that buzz back. This week it wasn’t there.
“I think Darren’s been given a lot of criticism but it’s not his fault. He turned up and tried his guts out and at times bowled some good spells. I felt sorry for him. He’s not been in the set-up and didn’t know anyone. And we didn’t know him, so it was very difficult for him.
“Whether it affected the other players in the dressing-room, I haven’t heard that it did, but we didn’t play as a unit. I was involved in the selection. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. But one man didn’t lose us a Test match, the collective unit lost us the match.”
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