Team director Andy Flower insists that England's batsmen don't need to make serious changes to their techniques in order to improve their fortunes against spin.

The world's number one Test side were brought crashing back down to earth during the first Test against Pakistan in Dubai as two poor batting efforts brought a 10-wicket defeat inside three days.

Offspinner Saeed Ajmal did the worst damage, taking 10 wickets in the match, but Flower does not believe that his batsmen need to radically change their techniques if they are to succeed against spin.

"One of our principles is to continually improve - and we can certainly improve on this performance," he said.

"We all know that it was the batting that let us down in this Test.

"But our batsmen have a pretty good record against spin, so I don't think it's a matter of reinventing the wheel.

"Of course, we will try to learn from it.

"But they all have their individual strengths, and they have to focus on those - and most of our batsmen will recognise that they under-performed for various reasons in this Test match."

Captain Andrew Strauss is beginning to come under fire after a lean time in Test cricket - his last hundred came in Brisbane back in November 2010.

However, Flower is confident that the opener will bounce back.

"He's a pretty calm bloke, and I wouldn't say he's in poor form at all," Flower said of his captain.

"He looks very composed and compact at the crease. He got out in the first innings to a shot he wouldn't want to repeat, and he was unlucky in the second innings - so that's how it goes sometimes.

"He will come back. As Strauss said yesterday, there's no point in panicking. What we've got to do is play better."

Kevin Pietersen was the main batsman to be singled out from England's horror performance with the bat, as his attempt to get off the mark with a pulled six over deep backward square-leg drew inevitable criticism.

Flower pointed out that Pietersen was not the only batsman guilty of a soft dismissal over the three days in Dubai.

"All batsmen are under pressure to make good decisions, and it's unfair to single out one batsman." he added.

"In a number of instances in both innings, there were soft dismissals and poor decisions - and if you make poor decisions in Test cricket, you get severely punished for it.

"Our batsmen have a record of making a lot of very good decisions, and that's part of the reason why we've done so well recently.

"We've made some incredible first-innings scores to put us into position to put the opposition under pressure.

"On this occasion, we weren't good enough to do that."

The second Test gets underway in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, with England still in with a chance of winning the three-match series if they can turn things around swiftly.

"One of the exciting things is that there are two Tests left, so we can still win the series," said Flower.

"I'd much rather be 1-0 up standing here. But that's not the case - we're dealing in the real world and we're one down.

"It's going to take a lot of great cricket to ensure firstly that we get up level with them, and then see if we can win."