The English Patients

For those who read my column last year during the Champions Trophy, this is a classic case of 'I-told-you-so'. I have maintained for a while now that Duncan Fletcher needs to go, particularly as ODI coach, and my exact words to describe England's uninspiring performance at the Champions Trophy were: "It is all very well for Duncan Fletcher to say he knows his 10 best ODI players, but it is another matter altogether to get them on the field. England haven't bowled well in a one-day game for a while now—either at the start or at the death. No one has really replaced Darren Gough, who handled the tremendous pressure of bowling at the death with aplomb, unlike Hoggard and Harmison, who are length bowlers and get smashed during the closing stages of a match."

Not much has changed since then, as England's woe-inspiring performance at the World Cup proves. I'd said we would be bad, and we were. In a way, it is a blessing in disguise that England performed the way it did. Had the team won more, the jubilations would have covered up a multitude of sins. It would have concealed the fact that this team has no gameplan for ODIs. No thinking goes into planning and strategy, and now that we have lost so badly, perhaps something will be done about it.

The standard excuses no longer work. The England team, man for man, probably plays more first class one-day games than any other team. The boys play 50, 40 and 20-over games for their counties right through the season. Therefore, the lack of exposure or experience theory won't wash.

The other big saviour in such situations, the theory about foreign players taking over English cricket, is dead before it was born, simply because we've always had foreign players, and despite the 'Kolpak' foray, the numbers remain much as they were. Think about it: there are 18 counties, which means a total of 198 players if you take the first elevens. Of these, 36 will be overseas players—as always, two per team—so that brings the number to 162 bona fide English players. Of these again, 18 are 'Kolpak' players, so the final pool from which English selectors can choose comes down to 144.

They can't choose a functioning eleven out of 144 players? Australia has 66 to choose from—less than half—and is the world's best Test and ODI team. So stop making excuses and accept that some of our lads just aren't good enough for top-level international cricket.

Not even the thinking is right, to begin with, which is why Fletcher must go. As I have said before, one-day cricket is a batting game, and any team looks—or should look—to get its three best batsmen coming in at one, two and three. Australia does it, New Zealand does it and Sri Lanka does it. The intention, as they have shown, is to get any of these guys to play through 50 overs and get a whopper, so that the team scores heavily. When they were the world's best and second best ODI batsmen, batting in which positions did Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly score most of their runs? The point is that with bats getting heavier, boundaries shorter, pitches flatter, and restrictions on bowlers harsher, batsmen rule the ODI roost, so why would a team put in Michael Vaughan and Ian Bell among the top three?

Andrew Strauss is more promising, but England's top three, simply put, don't frighten anyone. Vaughan has been a pathetic ODI player for some time now, and it's useless to conceal that behind captaincy. That's problem number one. Second, Andrew Flintoff is no longer the middle order force. Expectations that he'd perform the function that Andrew Symonds does for the Aussies, the murderer-of-slow-bowlers-in-the-middle-overs role, has since gone down the drain.

Finally, there is a complete absence of wicket-taking bowlers in the middle overs and asphyxiating bowlers at the death—those who have nerves of steel and a huge heart, mix up slower ones and yorkers, and, in short, emulate Darren Gough, the last brilliant at-the-death bowler, with a heart as large as a manhole cover. The more you went after him, the more he came at you, one reason why the Aussies loved him.

End of the day: I believe Vaughan's future as ODI player is on the line. He can't be a non-playing captain any longer. As for Tests, the shattering Ashes loss must count for something surely? There's no shame in losing, but here is shame when none of the five Tests that you play extend beyond four days. We went over the top with Ashes 2005, forgetting it was just one series and there would be more. We have now come to the crunch, and something's got to give.