England national teams have always had an arrogance about them, no matter what form of the game they’re playing. Because they’re English they feel they should win just by turning up and, as has been shown time after time, they always get brought down to size.

After their win up at Durham at the start of the one-dayers against New Zealand with Kevin Pietersen’s switch-hitting against Scott Styris, England thought they had a good chance of building on that success. But again victory failed to materialise and who would have expected Styris to be the man who eventually sealed the series for the Black Caps with an unbeaten 87 in the final match at Lord’s?

Once again, England’s batting let them down after their bowlers had done the hard work. There is no consistency or thoughtful approach to England’s play at the moment, and that’s why they only ranked six in the ODI rankings. As stand-in captain for the final match, Pietersen admitted that it was a problem, his own form dropping to just 23 runs in the last four matches.

Take the fourth match at The Oval; New Zealand needed two off the final ball, England brought the fielders in to prevent losing the two runs, but as Mark Gillespie and Kyle Mills made the run for the single to tie, an awful overthrow to the stumps from Graeme Swann allowed Gillespie to go back for the winning run with nobody backing up. Ravi Bopara admitted afterwards that the players had agreed the ball would be thrown to hands from the midfield rather than straight at the stumps which explains why nobody was backing up, but to allow New Zealand to win from that position is unacceptable. It’s just another example of poor all-round play from England.

With South Africa coming up it’s very hard to see where England will be able to pick up a win if the batsmen fail to deliver again. Consistency has always been a major problem for England over the years and shows no sign of going away. To have built a good foundation at Durham and thrown it away in the manner they did borders on reckless. You can’t blame the captain, the whole team and coaching staff have to take the blame.

The England selectors have always shown faith in their players, and that’s perhaps their downfall. There are a number of guys in county cricket who are performing well every week, but are continually overlooked at international level, and it’s about time the selectors showed that they’re not afraid to make changes. Experience as an international player only goes so far to helping when you’re on the field and England don’t look assured. There are glimpses of brilliance, but only for a couple of hours. Conceding 96 off the final 10 overs in the final game at Lord's was disastrous for England after containing New Zealand to 71 for three, leaving England to chase 267.

The series was definitely full of drama with the switch-hitting, mid-wicket collisions, run-outs, suspensions for slow over rates, and play abandoned in one match with six balls left. New Zealand suffered more as a result of them, yet still showed the determination to somehow win it 2-1.

Only a few England players can walk away from the series confident they did well. Owais Shah proved he is one of England’s better ODI players, and has to be kept on for South Africa. While you can’t really fault captain Paul Collingwood, he made a crucial mistake not to withdraw his controversial run-out appeal of Grant Elliott in the fourth ODI and he also got a ban for a slow over rate in the same match. Stuart Broad was definitely the stand-out player. Tim Ambrose offered nothing with the bat and was suspect behind the stumps, and he has to be replaced by Matt Prior or Phil Mustard.

England coach Peter Moores can’t be looking forward to the Proteas on current form, but it’s down to him to turn it around. If he can’t do that with the current players, then he needs to dump them and bring players in who can do the job for five matches, not one or two.