by Our Sports Desk

England collapsed to a 95-run defeat at Lord’s yesterday, to concede a 1-0 series lead and pile ever more pressure on their captain Alastair Cook.

The hosts lost their last six wickets for 50 runs — an implosion Cook in particular could ill afford as the admirable earlier work of Joe Root (66) and Moeen Ali was squandered in an unending pickle once Ishant Sharma (seven for 74) resorted to the short ball.

Root and Moeen raised expectations of an unlikely assault on England’s all-time second-highest run chase, with a century stand for the fifth wicket, but those fanciful notions came crashing down in a flurry of mis-pulls.

Moeen was first to go, not to a pull but a gloved catch to short-leg from the final ball before lunch.

Root responded by using his feet and cashed in England’s first boundary in 15 overs when he found an inch or two of width, from up the wicket, and cracked the ball past cover on the up.

But when Dhoni switched tactics, Ishant trying to bounce rather than bowl out the batsmen, first Root was discomforted — and then, on the stroke of lunch, Moeen failed to deal with the new line of attack.

Prior lasted until the fourth over of early afternoon, after Ishant went round the wicket to him.

It was a hammer blow for England, with the second new ball immediately available, when their wicketkeeper-batsman pulled straight into the hands of one of three men stationed for that very mistake in the leg-side deep.

Stokes then continued a near runless streak of just 18 in his last 10 international innings, when he made his sixth duck in that sequence, mis-pulling Ishant to mid-on.

All fading chances therefore rested on Root, but his attempt to wrest back any initiative would also founder on the pull shot against Ishant when he picked out deep square-leg.

The remaining business was a formality, for the record Stuart Broad gloving Ishant behind down the leg-side before the embarrassment was complete when James Anderson was last out in an appropriately tragic-comic run-out and a direct hit from his nemesis Jadeja.

Speaking after the match, Cook vowed to carry on as captain but admitted that the side lack confidence at the moment.

“It gets harder and harder the more we don’t win and of course that heaps on you at the end of the day.

“Until that bloke taps me on the shoulder and says ‘we don’t want you to captain’ I’m desperate to try to turn this around for England.”