Keaton Jennings has to change his ways otherwise it’s all over 

Keaton Jennings’ dismissal on Monday was incredibly unlucky but it has worked in the selectors’ favour because if he’d got a score they would have been in a quandary with regards to the Ashes.

Jennings is struggling on the drive against pitched-up, seam bowling. So, unless he completely remodels his game, I’d be very surprised to see him walking out to bat against Australia in August. 

The decision he has to make is whether he wants to be a county player or have another go at international cricket.

Keaton Jennings has to change his ways otherwise it’s all over at international level

He’s looked vulnerable around his off-stump time after time, replicating the pattern of several of the top-three batsmen England have tried over recent years — think Gary Ballance, Tom Westley and James Vince.

So, what is he going to do about it? He’s only got six weeks to address it because, once the county season starts in April, he will be playing on nibbling pitches that will expose his issues — and because he has played at the highest level, everyone knows exactly where to bowl at him.

Players like Ballance have gone back to their counties denying the need for change and have come back to the international game with the same issues. Jennings must decide if he needs to change the way he plays for the sake of his career.

They say the definition of madness is to keep doing the same thing expecting a different result and it would be mad of him to think he can return for England without tinkering. 

Jennings’ dismissal for England was incredibly unlucky as he was bowled out by Alzarri Joseph

Graham Gooch, one of the greatest players England has produced, kept getting out lbw to Terry Alderman in the 1989 Ashes by going back and across. 

After that, Graham decided he had to change and that he must stay leg-side of the ball to take that dismissal out of the equation. He worked for hours in the nets at Essex, drilling his foot movements.

When Duncan Fletcher was in charge of England, he organised a coaches’ chat at which he asked, ‘What is the biggest problem you have with your players?’

They said it was a lack of time to work with them. Players were re-hashing bad habits.

A golfer might take a month off to work on their swing. Cricketers don’t have that kind of period available to dismantle their game, other than in windows at the start and end of a season.

You can tell Jennings is a lad who has been drilled on a lot of throw-down and bowling-machine work with his father Ray, the former South Africa coach. He’s a very robotic player and he lacks a break of the wrist. There is no hit through extra cover, no flat-bat, which is unusual for a left-hander.

Some of the balls that should have been going in those areas, he has been trying to strike from an upright position through mid-off. David Gower would have been hitting the same balls a lot squarer.

The 26-year-old is struggling on the drive against pitched-up, seam bowling 

Jennings might need to develop a wider stance, so he has a lower base. He might need to get a bit quicker on his feet.

Right now, it seems ridiculous to suggest Jennings could re-emerge at the highest level. But of course he can. This is a guy who scored a Test hundred at the start of the winter, albeit in his favoured spinning conditions in Sri Lanka.

Mark Butcher underwent the kind of major overhaul Jennings requires, working alongside his old man Alan for three months, and came back a better player.

Jennings needs to look at footage and assess how he can transfer his weight into shots. A good way to do that is to speak to left-handed coaches. He should chat to Marcus Trescothick. Tres didn’t move his feet much but he was always leaning into the ball when it was pitched up.

Then, when national selector Ed Smith and his merry men are watching him score lots of runs for Lancashire down the line, as I expect he will, they can judge how effectively he has addressed the failings that have dogged him.