So what have we really learned in the wake of yesterday’s events at the ECB? Who is pulling the strings here? Who is in charge? What is the captain of England supposed to do? What is the precise role of the England Cricket Director?

 

We got none of those answers yesterday on a very unsatisfactory day for the England cricket team. In truth, did we really ever expect to get these answers? This is a sport that can’t boot out Zimbabwe, a country imploding as we watch, for the integrity of the game. It is a sport that allows a team to dine at the top table without beating a single major test nation in coming up to its 10^th anniversary polluting test records. It is a sport that does not know how to run its major one day competition.

 

England is the ICC in miniature, with vested self interest, preposterous back room figures and a clear focus on self-preservation over restoration and enhancement. England cricket was on a high four years ago, seemed to get to the top of the parapet (when all we had done was earn the right to be discussed in the same breath as the Aussies) and then lost focus. When I said, pre the 2006-7 Ashes it was more likely England would lose 5-0 than to win the series, my mates looked at me as if I was mad. I could see the lethargy, the complacency and the deficiencies.

 

So to yesterday, where Peter Moores position was rendered untenable, and KP was effectively sacked. It has given the chattering classes, me included, plenty to chew on. Loads of opinion, some of it, in my opinion absolutely laughable, has been written and broadcast across the airwaves and print media. I have heard people saying that KP should never play for England again, that KP is for himself and him alone, that the team would be better off without him.

 

I despair of this nation at times. We had a laughable bloke from Lancashire on who on the one hand thought he could crucify KP as a selfish egotist, who lest we forget averages over 50 in tests, with 15 test centuries in 45 matches and over 4000 runs. This is a man with an average of 48 in one day cricket, with 7 centuries – if you exclude Strauss, who hasn’t played one day cricket, and look at our last ODI team we put out that had 9 centuries between the rest of them. He’s a key figure, and yet this loon thought he was dispensable. Look, mate, England has had few players average this much, this long into their test careers. We certainly don’t need to be booting them out. We need to be accommodating them.

 

You know my stance on Moores and KP if you read this and my past blog. The mediatocracy planted in everyone’s mind that Duncan Fletcher had to go in 2007 after the Ashes disaster. The mediatocracy made damn sure he was going during the 2007 World Cup and they got their man. At that World Cup Andrew Flintoff, not for the first time, let himself and his teammates down with his off the field antics. Instead of England treating this guy’s views with the contempt it deserved, as the leader of a 5-0 defeated team and a drunken liability to boot, he is sanctified in this country. We laud him as the world’s best all-rounder, when it is clear to anyone that the man who actually fills that title has been a bit player in South Africa’s rise to world domination, and that Flintoff, actually, if you look at the numbers is probably behind Daniel Vettori as well now. Yet all I hear today is that KP didn’t get on with him and he is so important to the England dressing room.

 

Why? Because he’s the fool? Because he’s the one us lardy beasts who like a beer can relate to as “one of us”. The old hungover the night before, get out of bed and be a hero type that England worships. We view professionalism and responsibility quite quizzically in England. Aren’t you a bit odd if you are a professional sportsman and show your desire to improve yourself at every turn? We hate ambition and drive, if truth be told. We therefore view KP’s drive and stated ambition as something sinister, when we should be embracing it and developing it. I don’t care much for the view that his brilliance can’t benefit the team. Before captaincy he came across as nothing but a decent team mate who went about his batting in his own way. I got enraged when his positive shot at Edgbaston that got him out was chided by Atherton as “costing England the game” when instead of looking at someone who had made 94 under pressure, he should have been looking at those who flopped before (and in the case of Flintoff immediately after) him. How could that innings, selfish as it could have been, as arrogant as KP could have been, not have benefitted England? What do these people see?

 

Now today it appears as though the line to take, as driven by the ECB is that KP had divided the dressing room. How? Because he wanted to win? Because he doesn’t accept mediocrity in himself so doesn’t see why others should? Because he believes, as many of us do, that this England team could do better? Because, as he believes, as many of us do, that Moores’ record does not stand up to rational scrutiny, and that maybe, just maybe, there is a better man out there? Maybe it wasn’t his place to say “I don’t like the coach, and don’t believe he’s the way forward”, but when he was appointed his reservations were known, and now we are shocked? What’s he to do, keep his mouth shut? Many believe the answer to that is yes, hence he’s gone. Let’s just accept mediocrity. After all, if it keeps Freddie on board, it has got to be worth it.

 

Now people say KP has to go back to the England team and be contrite. Why? He’s the best damn player on that team, and if anything, they’ve got to get him on board. His views should carry as much weight as Flintoff’s, if not more. He needs to be on board with the new captain, who performed so well in 2006 and was dumped for the great all-rounder with nothing to back it up. And England need his runs in that vital number 4 position, and we need big hundreds. My hope is that his evident tough streak, his complete arrogance, will mean that he shuts out the media furore and will score massive runs for England. It will be seen by those who think they know best that they did the right thing. I don’t think they did. KP wanted his way forward, and was told to shut up and behave. When he expressed those concerns, he was brought down by the culture of mediocrity.

 

KP should look around that dressing room and ask the players “do you like being 5^th in the world” because he clearly did not. Michael Vaughan didn’t either, and nor did Nasser Hussain. It seems too many people in that dressing room did. In purging a loud-mouth, England may well have hamstrung the only world class batsman we have. Only we could do that and think it improves us as a team.