Same old, same old England

Well that all went well, then.

Anyone watching the denouement of the third test in Barbados would be excused for thinking they were watching a repeat. (Well, anyone following England anyway: fans of West Indian cricket would have been justifiably excited by the changes that their new management team of Phil Simmons and Curtly Ambrose have wrought so quickly. Less brittleness in the batting, less indiscipline in the bowling, and in Jermaine Blackwood in particular they appear to have found a batsman who can play in different ways as the occasion demands.) But enough of West Indies…

England made crucial mistakes throughout this series. They all seem to stem from a naturally conservativism that can lead to stifling caution.

Three of them concern selection, and reflect poorly on the current selectors, the management and the captain. In trying to win this test match without a recognised spinner, England set themselves an impossible task. Mooen Ali bowled reasonably well against India last summer, but it was obvious that India’s batsmen really didn’t believe they could win a test series in England. On this tour, Ali’s action appears less fluid, and he has bowled a much larger proportion of dross. He has proved neither capable of ‘keeping one end tight’ or of penetrating and taking wickets. This is not his fault. He is not a first-class bowler. Adil Rashid might be one day, but not if he never plays (although he may always be a second option rather than the go-to-man). And James Tredwell is a doughty campaigner who performed well in the first test. There has been much muttering that the academy at Loughborough, now Andy Flower’s domain, hasn’t produced any spinners worthy of the name, despite its multi-million pound budget.

The second concerns poor old Jonathan Trott. You may have noticed that he retired from international cricket yesterday (although wags might suggest a date some time earlier in the month.) He seems a nice man. But he should never

It takes leadership to change things. Not managerial gradualism. The ECB should take note.

have been involved. Because he was never going to be the man to open against the two Mitchells this summer.

In a sane world, Adam Lyth would be three tests into his international career. Now he’ll have to wait till the series against New Zealand.

The final example of the curse of conservatism (getting political in this general election week) is the fact that the bowling attack still depends horribly on the form of Jimmy Anderson. We all know he’s England’s record wicket-taker, but he’s also the man who has bowled a fifth more overs than any of his rivals at the top of the rankings, and he can’t go on for ever. And when he doesn’t fire, as he didn’t in the West Indies’ second innings, England look absolutely toothless. Stuart Broad has always been a streaky bowler, capable of summoning up an immense effort of will, but Chris Jordan and Ben Stokes look merely tidy at best. Without much greater variation, they are offering up the international version of military medium pace. And we can be sure that Messrs Warner and Finch in particular will be eyeing that ravenously. Some greater experimentation is needed. Perhaps Liam Plunkett’s greater pace and ‘heavier ball’ might have made a greater impact. (Though it must be said that Jordan is one of the most amazing slip fielders I have ever seen, although he’s not always allowed to field in the cordon.)

The responsibility for these selections lies with three men: James Whittaker, Peter Moores and Alastair Cook. It also lies with a culture that still bears the deep imprint of Andy Flower’s claws. Risk minimisation is at its heart. Steady accumulation is preferred to a more dominating approach; bowling in areas to bowling wicket-taking deliveries; deploying Jos Buttler’s destructive talents at number 8 (not out three times, only 175 balls faced in the entire series) rather than higher up the order…

Briefly, it seemed as if the incoming ECB chairman Colin Graves was about to sweep all this away. Fresh from cleaning the Augean stables at Headingley and creating a winning culture at Yorkshire, Graves was seen as a breath of fresh air. (We can forget about his ill-advised comments about the West Indies being a ‘mediocre side’ for the moment.)

Paul Downton, former wicketkeeper turned stockbroker then MD of the England team was first to go. Then it was announced that we would soon see the appointment of a cricket tsar, solely accountable for the performance of the England men’s XI. Michael Vaughan threw his hat into the ring, as did the Gaffer, Alec Stewart (though Surrey’s less than stellar record during his, well, stewardship might have counted against him. Jason Gillespie was mentioned as the next coach. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive…

No more. After ‘talks’, Michael Vaughan has suggested that he is no longer interested. Stewart has suggested that the ECB need to decide what the terms of reference are. (After an interview.) Andrew Strauss is the last man standing. And curiously, Andrew Strauss is the last man likely to stand up to the culture of caution that he helped to create. (Gillespie’s much-publicised rejection of the South Australia coaching job seems much more likely to be the prelude to succeed Darren Lehmann with the baggy greens than Peter Moores with the three lions.

Strauss seems a nice man. Very laid back. Not fond of Kevin Pietersen, but then who is these days? He’s a public schoolboy – unlike Vaughan and Stewart – so he’s obviously ‘officer class’, and he’ll fit in well at Lord’s having played there for the best part of a decade. But he’s not going to change anything. Moores and Cook will be allowed to fail again, to the strains of Kipling’s ‘Recessional’. (And Austrailia will be very pleased to help them.)

And once again in England, managerialism and gradualism will occupy the space where leadership should stand.

Australia ‘really good’ shock

Slytherin’s Draco Malfoy, top death-eater and subject of much abuse in Australia.

He wasn’t always so gritty. A young Graeme Smith waits to have greatness thrust upon him. But even he gave up in the face of Australia’s new aggressive cricket.

So it’s finally over. Australia defeated South Africa in the third test at Newlands (just). And it feels like a new order is emerging in world cricket.

Australia are playing an aggressive form of the game that we haven’t seen for many years. Love him or hate him, Davie Warner goes out there to dominate. When he succeeds, he throws the opposition bowlers off their game plan immediately, and so far, very few have managed to get back on track. (Dale Steyn did briefly in the second test, but he was hamstrung in the third.) And Mitchell Johnson does the same to the opposition batsmen. Having smashed England’s plan of grinding accumulation in the Ashes, he got stuck into some much better South African batsmen with much the same results.

Chapeau to Darren Lehmann then, for ‘creating the environment’ in which these two maverick talents could finally thrive.

Between them, and with stoical support from Ryan Harris and Brad Haddin, both of whose bodies are held together with elastoplast, they have bade farewell to any number of top cricketers. Graeme Smith has given up the ghost, and is applying for Irish citizenship. Jacques Kallis saw what was coming and decided to bow out on a high. KP was stabbed in the back. Andy Flower moved himself upstairs and out of the firing line, while Graeme Swann decided it was time to put himself first, and Jonathan Trott couldn’t keep his demons under control any more. We can add Matt ‘Big Cheese’ Prior to the list as well, given the damage done to his reputation as England’s finest wicketkeeper/batsman during the winter.

So what’s the secret? Fast and aggressive bowling, in short spells, with no attritional ‘aim it outside off stump’ tactics. Johnson isn’t always accurate. But if he’s only bowling two or three over spells, he’s got a chance to come back later. His job is simply to bowl quickly. And fast and aggressive batting. Warner’s been scoring at almost a run a ball, and he’s been scoring big too. He won’t succeed all the time, but when he does, he really does.

The fast bowling will continue, because Australia have got a lot of talent in that vein coming through (if they can keep it fit). But they don’t have another destroyer like Warner, any more than the West Indies in their prime had another Greenidge, or Australia of a different era another Hayden. (Aaron Finch seems the nearest thing, but he’s still too T20 flaky to be trusted.)

Their middle order is patchy too. They keep trying out number threes, without much great success, although at least Lehmann’s got Michael Clarke to bat at four, and Shane Watson will come back at six. But they’ll get that back too. And we can be sure that Clarke will play until after the next Ashes at least, which will be bad news for George Bailey’s test career.

Predictions? Pitches will get lower and slower outside Australia, to neuter their pace attack. And England will still be preaching – and playing – defensive cricket for the foreseeable future. Which is a shame, given all those tall bowlers we have at our disposal.

Australia ‘actually quite good’ shock

Hold the front page. It appears that we may have misread what happened in the Ashes down under. What if, and it’s a big ‘what if?’ What if, rather than England being historically rubbish, the Australians were actually quite good?

I suspect the truth lies somewhere between the tabloid poles. England were very bad at times, and Lehmann and Clarke’s policy of ‘mental disintegration’ worked to perfection. Who would have predicted the departure of Trott and Swann, the destruction of Cook as a batsman and the bitter reprisals around Kevin Pietersen as the going got tough? (Well, we’d all have predicted the last one, but you get my drift.) But Australia are shaping up to be a pretty good side. And they are doing it in a new way.

After years of what might be described as PowerPoint coaches (Mickey Arthur and John Buchanan being the arch-practitioners of death by team meeting, with Andy Flower following on only a little way behind), we might just be seeing a change in direction. A change to a back to basics, lead by example, few beers and a fag kind of coaching. It’s typified by Darren Lehmann, and let’s see how it affects who gets the England job in the end.

Its hallmark is a move away from a ‘moneyball’ love of stats and corporate-sounding plans towards a much more aggressive approach. And nowhere is this clearer than in the series between the Saffers and the Aussies. Lehmann is leading the new guard, with its emphasis on doing what you do best and getting stuck in. He is faced by Russell Domingo, the analysis-friendly coach of the Proteas. Lehmann played at the highest level, though didn’t make it to the very, very, very top. Domingo became full-time coach in his 20s, when he realised he wasn’t going to make the grade. The Australian players trust Lehmann. Indeed they may well have agitated for his appointment. Domingo was Gary Kirsten’s number two, and is very good friends with a number of his team. But he can’t tell them what he’d have done if he’d been out there in the middle. Lehmann can. And so can his good friend Mr Shane Warne. Warne has just been appointed as some kind of (literal) spin doctor to the team. But you can bet he’s already offering opinions and advice to anyone prepared to listen. And the fact that they are listening is obvious when you hear the Australian bowlers talking about changing their angle of attack and using the crease more. As well as being just a bit more aggressive than their counterparts.

And that’s the really telling bit for me. Lehmann has picked men to lead his bowling attack, not just sportsmen. Mitchell Johnson has always been a superb natural athlete, but now he has the mental toughness to keep going when it’s not all going perfectly (We may have the Barmy Army to thank for that.) We’ve discussed the champion woodcutter Peter Siddle’s man-stuff here before. And Ryan Harris has it. As does working class lad Nathan Lyon. They’re not the products of an isolated and elitist ‘academy culture’. They’re blokes, and tough ones at that. They probably take a fair bit of management: which Lehmann seems to be rather good at.

Among the new batsmen, Lehmann has gone for purity of technique over biff. Shaun Marsh has flattered to deceive over the years, but he plays with an impeccably straight bat. And now he’s scored his fourth century. So if the block was a mental one, there’s nothing standing between this former boozy tearaway and a place among the greats. (And he’s a left-hander, which means Dale Steyn is going to find it harder to bowl to him.) Alex Doolan looks the part too. Maybe we’re going to see a move away from bits and pieces performers to people who are picked for their ability to do exactly what they do best, best. (And who are encouraged to try to do it by the management team too, rather than being told to ‘execute plans’ that a technician with a computer has drawn up for them.)

Of course, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the rest of the series, but the South Africans’ body language in the field suggested they were beaten long before the end, and they really missed Jacques Kallis. (As any side would, though I wonder if he timed his retirement just as right as he used to time those drives of his.) They have lost a lot of balance now don’t have any proper all-rounder any more (Maclaren and Pieterson are not genuine test-quality all-rounders) and Australia may have two in Shane Watson and Brad Haddin by the time of the second test. No matter who  plays, It may be very hard for them to get the idea of Mitchell Johnson charging in out of their head.

Interestingly, Domingo’s arrival was well planned and orderly – a careful handover after years of grooming by Gary Kirsten (who was precisely the kind of respected hands-on coach we are talking about). Lehmann’s was chaotic and ad hoc – the outcome of a palace coup. But we only have to look at the current state of affairs in Manchester football to be reminded that there are no smooth handovers in top-level sport, no matter how painstakingly planned.

All we need now is for the ECB to go with the trend and appoint a battle hardened warrior rather than a disciple of Billy Bean to the top job. (I’m not holding my breath: they’ve never been ahead of the curve before.)

Let’s just hope that whoever the new leader is, he can cope with the outrage if one of the world’s leading players criticises him when asked for his opinion in private.

Curiouser and curiouser

The original mystery spinner. Florence’s own Niccolo Machiavelli could teach our leading cricketers a thing or two. Or could he?

A theory is doing the rounds today that Kevin Pietersen cooked his England goose by launching a furious attack on Andy Flower and his methods at a ‘secret’ meeting of the players at the end of the fourth test in Melbourne.

According to this theory, the players, led by Alastair Cook and Matt Prior, were chafing under the restrictions that their head coach was placing on them, and wanted to be allowed to take more responsibility for their own destinies. Pietersen seems to have seen it – or to have been seen as seeming to have seen it – as an opportunity to call for much more dramatic changes. The Telegraph even describes him as having ‘launched a foul-mouthed tirade’ about Flower, which appears to have shocked some of those present, who were presumably attending to give their boss a vote of confidence.

As with all ‘secret’ meetings, the topics under discussion soon reached the ears of those in charge, who then reacted in a predictable way. Flower ‘summoned’ Pietersen to a meeting, and accused him of ‘undermining’ his leadership and that of Alastair Cook. Rather than risk another ‘us or them’ situation like that which led to Pietersen’s dismissal as captain and Peter Moore’s sacking as coach in the West Indies after the last ‘player revolt’ (or ‘mutiny’ depending on whose chair you’re sitting in), Flower is thought to have decided to resign with dignity, confident that Pietersen would then be forced to walk the gang plank in a very public manner indeed.

This reading explains recent furious exchanges on twitter between Matt Prior and ‘friends of Pietersen’ about who which players may or may not have shared the details of KP’s ‘tirade’ with Andy Flower. Both Prior and his ally Tim Bresnan have been vocal in denying that they were involved in any way.

But this reading ignores another, even more intriguing possibility. Could it be that the players, or some of them, were roundly sick of both Pietersen’s perceived attitude and of their coach’s schoolmasterly demeanour and saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone?

By organising the ‘secret’ meeting, then relying on the bush telegraph to make sure that what was discussed and by whom reached the ears of their demon headmaster, the remaining players could almost certainly have been certain that they would ensure the departure of both sources of irritation, while still looking like good team men themselves.

Of course, we will never know. But it may just be that we are seeing the development of a rather more Machievellian culture within the leadership of Team England, at the very time when that leadership are explicitly calling for time to rebuild not only the team, but also its ethics.

So farewell then, Andy Flower

“He’s gone.” Jim Laker’s favourite two words seem the only way to sum up the departure of England’s most successful head coach ever.

Three Ashes series in a row,
The number one test spot:
The job is tough.

But thanks to the KP row,
It seems it’s all not
enough.

Thank you, and goodnight.

(EJ Thribb, aged 17)

Well now we know where the ECB think the responsibility for the shambles in Australia lies. Andy Flower has been relieved of his responsibilities as coach. So KP won after all, even though Flower has always insisted he never issued an ultimatum.

It always seemed unlikely that England would try to move towards the world cup without one of their finest ever batsmen, albeit one who can’t go on for ever. But then nor could Andy Flower. So when it came to choosing between a busted flush and an almost busted one, Paul Downton has made the right call. It may seem ungrateful, but it is almost always true that sporting careers do not end in glory, and he seemed at a loss for ideas when things started to go wrong, and then didn’t stop going wrong, over the winter.

This is Downton’s first big decision as Managing Director – the man with whom the buck stops. His second will almost certainly be who is the right man to replace Flower. That’s an even bigger call.

It’s normal for entire regimes to change when a head coach leaves, so it’s unlikely that Ashley Giles will be given the Test job to go alongside his ODI custodianship. And he surely must be regarded as part of the problem that led to England’s worst-ever tour down under. (The lack of preparation, the curious lack of urgency, the lack of a plan, the lack of an ability to change when circumstances were changing, the lack of appetite for a fight shown by all the senior players (except perhaps for Ian Bell), even the ludicrously overprescriptive menu all look like signs of an approach whose time has gone.)

It’s slightly reminiscent of the way Shane Warne talks about John Buchanan’s last throw of the dice as Australia’s coach during the 2005 Ashes. He was very good when it came to explaining the coaching organogram or the significance of a visit to Gallipoli, but less use when you needed advice on how to play a reverse-swinging Yorker at 90mph. England are no longer top dogs, and for a long time have looked short of class and bottle when measured against the very best.

Expect the new coach to be a players’ man, like Darren Lehmann, heavy on the practical and the motivational, and light on the management-speak. And expect there to be much talk of back to basics, enjoying a pint, and self-reliance. It’ll work for a while, and then it’ll fail for a while, and then there’ll be a new man.

It was KP what done it. (Or was it the poor?)

‘Catch that you plebs’. The PM looks for someone to blame for the economic crisis, Andy Flower looks for someone to blame for the Ashes catastrophe.

It’s beginning to feel eerie. The parallels between political life in England and the world of English cricket team are getting too close for comfort. It happened before, of course, when we invited young West Indian cricketers over in the 1970s and then accused them of ruining the game for homegrown players, just as the innocent passengers on the Empire Windrush came to be blamed for changing English society beyond all recognition.

Except that this time the parallels are not about immigration. They can’t be, because neither of the protagonists is English born and bred. They are about who is to blame for the latest fiasco down under, who will take charge of the rebuilding project, and the struggle is between one of England’s finest ever batsmen and one of England’s finest ever coaches. In this parallel with the way the blame for the 2008 crash has been shifted from out-of-control bankers (difficult to regulate, likely to vote Tory) to ‘the poor’ (easy to regulate because dependent on benefits, not likely to vote at all), the blame for the 2013-4 Ashes debacle is being shifted from ‘a failure of the collective’ to ‘it was all KP’s fault’.

So we have article after article purporting to know the contents of Andy Flower’s mind, or of Alastair Cook’s innermost thoughts, all of which keep telling us that ‘KP is not a team player’ or ‘KP let the side down’ in Australia. It wasn’t Pietersen that picked three fast bowlers who were never going to be able to bowl fast this winter. It wasn’t Pietersen who scuttled off home early when the going got tough. Or who retired when he was taking too much of a pasting. It wasn’t Pietersen who went from being the finest wicketkeeper/batsman since Les Ames to someone who couldn’t get the ball off the cut strip. It wasn’t Pietersen who bowled too short, all the time. It wasn’t Pietersen who couldn’t score any runs when opening. And it wasn’t Pietersen who captained the side so badly that even during the brief moments it was on top, it could never manage to get Brad Haddin out. (This is Brad Haddin we’re talking about, not Vivian Richards.)

Forgive me for over-egging the pudding, but Pietersen scored the most runs of any English batsman in the series (294). So it can’t all be his fault, can it?

Well, apparently it can.

In exactly the same way that the poor were to blame for the 2008 banking crisis, by needing benefits the state conveniently decided it could no longer afford once it had spent all that money shoring up the banks that were ‘too big to fail’.

Because no sooner had the dust settled on the fifth test, than rumours began circulating that Pietersen was going to be required to play county cricket for Surrey in order to prove his worth to England, and that he wouldn’t be able to do this because he would already be committed to the IPL.

Except, of course, he wasn’t already committed to the IPL. In fact, the franchise who ‘owned’ him, the Delhi Daredevils, had decided not to retain his contract in advance of the next player auction. (So that’s answered that question, without even opening the debate on whether playing against second division bowlers in the second division of the county championship on green pitches at the beginning of the season would be more useful than playing against the very best players in the world (including the very Indian and Sri Lankan cricketers who will be coming on tour later in the season).

Then it was rumoured that Pietersen would be retiring from international cricket in order to concentrate on his lucrative Twenty20 career.

Except, of course, he denied this. And let it be known that he is very keen on playing for England again. (At which point he was accused of being ‘media savvy’ by people within the England camp who were themselves media savvy enough to make sure the story ran.)

Then Andy Flower denied that he had ever said ‘it’s him or me’. When no one but Andy Flower had ever mentioned the possibility of him having said it in the first place.

Then the ECB hierarchy offered their support to Andy Flower as the right man to take England forward. In advance of their own inquiry into who was the right man to take England forward, and before Paul Downton, Managing Director of the England Cricket Team, had finished his gardening leave.

Then Alastair Cook pointedly refused to support Pietersen, at the same time as pointedly supporting Flower. And started to let it be known that the strain of the ODI captaincy might be affecting his form in the longer game.

So far, so spare bedroom tax. But what are the facts?

Pietersen is one of the finest batsmen in the world. Just over a year ago, he played his finest innings for England, making 186 runs, largely in tandem with Cook, in a partnership that helped secure a momentous series win in India. And he made more runs in the summer, as well as top scoring for England  in the last fiasco.

Cook of course is also one of the finest batsmen in the world, but in a diametrically opposed way to Pietersen. He is all accumulation, while Pietersen is all destruction. He occasionally wafts a wide ball to slip in just as frustrating a way as KP holes out to a man on the boundary put there for precisely that purpose.

What happened after that series in India was some sort of spectacular failure of nerve on the part of the England management. Instead of going off to New Zealand and battering their limited side off the park, England retreated into their shells and were very lucky indeed to escape with a drawn series. Poor Nick Compton ended up carrying the can for that, in the same way that Pietersen is being lined up now.

But it’s not their fault, honest.

During that series and the return matches that followed it, Alastair Cook (and Flower) were out-captained by Brendon McCullum. In the two Ashes series, he’s been out-captained by Michael Clarke and Darren Lehmann. Both opposing captains espoused a much more aggressive form of the game than that favoured by England. In England, it failed them, but away from our seaming wickets, it proved much more successful.

You can’t lay the blame for that at any individual’s door. Unless that individual is Andy Flower.

Yes, KP got out to some silly shots in the winter, but so did everyone, including Cook. And it’s massively unfair to blame Pietersen for the collective failings of an entire strategy. He didn’t plan the itinerary that denied everyone proper preparation. He didn’t fail to work out how broken Graeme Swann’s body was, or how tired Jimmy Anderson was, or that Chris Tremlett can’t bowl fast any more, Boyd Rankin isn’t fit enough to play test cricket, or that Steve Finn has been messed about with so much that he doesn’t know which end is up. He didn’t even pick Chris Woakes and Simon Kerrigan for the Oval test, which he came close to winning, on his own, with a uniquely aggressive form of cricket.

Am I the only one who remembers that at the end of the summer, Flower was teasing us all with his refusal to confirm whether he wanted to stay on after the Ashes down under. Now he’s certain he wants to, but he doesn’t want to be held accountable for the failure in Australia. I thought that was the whole point of having clear lines of responsibility. (I’m not saying he should be fired, but I do think his efforts to blame someone else to take the heat off himself and his captain are very unseemly indeed.)

I don’t think there’s time to find the right candidate to take over from Flower. Ashley Giles is too compromised as part of the existing set-up. Duncan Fletcher is too compromised by his past experiences. Darren Lehmann is too busy rebuilding Australia, and may be about to undergo a chastening experience at the hands of the best test side in the world. Which leaves John Buchanan, tainted by the Ross Taylor fiasco, and Gary Kirsten. Kirsten is an excellent coach, who achieved a great deal with India, but who gave that job up because he wanted to spend more time at home, which isn’t in England. (He’s also a little bit like Flower as a coach, but without the connections or the experience in county cricket.)

Personally, I believe Cook should give up the captaincy so that he can concentrate on his batting, but we’re hardly overrun with outstanding candidates. I think KP should be made vice captain and told to play nicely for the next couple of years.

One thing’s for sure, amid all this talk of ‘building for the future’, there’s an Indian team coming over here at the end of the summer who have already done all the building they need. It’s not the time to fling a load of promising youngsters at a team with the kind of power that the latest side from the sub-continent have at their disposal. Ben Stokes aside, we haven’t really seen anyone better than the blokes we’ve got.

And that is what the people in charge of England cricket should be thinking about. Not who to blame. But how to change. Quickly. Attritional cricket won’t work against India. They’ll just bat until they’ve worn the bowlers out. We need to be more aggressive. And that means we’re going to have to trust younger men as well as our established players.

Just as austerity won’t rebuild the economy, nor will blaming Pietersen solve the problems of a team whose method has come radically unstuck. It takes joined-up thinking to do both.

I’m starting to get bored of this cricket catenaccio

Catenaccio – the obsessively defensive football strategy that almost squeezed the life out of the beautiful game in the 1960s.

This morning, I was convinced something different would happen. I felt it in my bones. It almost did. But then, in the end, it didn’t quite come off.

I really believed that at some point during the meaningless ODI between England and Australia, Alastair Cook would make a decision of his own.

But he didn’t.

He continued to bowl Ben Stokes at James Faulkner. Who continued to hit the dross Stokes was delivering out of the ground. As a result, England lost the match, and find themselves two down with three to play. If Australia have their way, they’ll soon win this series 5-0. And England will be in a proper mess, in all forms of the game.

This can’t all be Kevin Pietersen’s fault. Like the poor and the banking crisis, he’s being put in the frame for a crime he didn’t commit.

It all comes down to Andy Flower, Ashley Giles, and poor old Alastair Cook.

(You’re all going to tell me that Flower’s not in charge of the one day team.) But the King of Spain is clearly following the Flower method. Amass a total, bowl to defend it. Stick to your plans. And if those plans mean that someone who is going for 7 and a bit runs an over carries on bowling at the death rather than someone who is bowling at five and a bit runs an over, then so be it.

To be fair, it’s a methodology that worked for England for a while. Particularly in England. And particularly against Australia. But it is essentially defensive. Which is fine when it works. But hopeless when it doesn’t.

It only just succeeded on very slow pitches in England in the summer. It has completely failed on slightly quicker pitches in Australia. And it’s not just a failure to ‘execute skills’, as the coaches would have it. It’s a failure of captaincy.

We know that this Australia side bat deep. And we know that the more a batsman can get into a rhythm, the more quickly he can score big runs. That’s one of the key lessons of Twenty20: never let anyone settle.

But watching England play at the moment is like watching a poor county side play Sunday league cricket in the 80s. The first pair of bowlers come on (normally one young tearaway plucked from a Caribbean beach or a south London council estate, and a skinny young lad who drives a fork lift truck around a warehouse all winter.)  and bowl half of their overs. Then they’re replaced by one slightly overweight slow bowler who is due a benefit next year and a former public schoolboy who used to open the batting for Oxford or Cambridge and who sends down a diet of unrelieved military medium as unimaginative as his choice of bedtime reading. Unless things go horribly wrong, these two bowl all their overs, and then are replaced by the opening pair, who finish things off with all the verve and joie de vivre associated with missionary position sex at the end of a forty-year marriage.

Stokes was getting smacked. Cook went and talked to him. Stokes got smacked some more. Bresnan ran in from the other end and got smacked. Meanwhile Ravi Bopara failed to bowl all his overs.

Cook could see the plan wasn’t working. So why didn’t he try something else? He’s played a lot of cricket. And there are a lot of men out there who could have given him some tips. They all waited for something to happen, rather than trying to make something happen. And that is the whole problem with England cricket right now.

I sat for a whole day at the Oval the summer before last watching Hashim Amla utterly destroy the England attack. But instead of anyone trying anything new, the bowlers just kept running in, bowling to the plans that so obviously weren’t working, like row after row of Tommies passively following each other over the top in 1916. Graeme Swann was the most toothless that day, but the others weren’t much better. And no one did anything to change the situation.

Cook wasn’t captain that series, but the method was the same, and it didn’t work. When faced with genuinely aggressive intent, England crumble time and time again. Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander comfortably outbowled England’s Ashes-winning attack in that series, while Amla, Graeme Smith, AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis put our less aggressive bowlers to the sword.

That’s what just happened to England in Australia, and what is still happening now, isn’t it? Yes, the pitches were a bit quicker, but they were the same for both sides, and they didn’t seem to trouble the Australian batsmen too much. They played with brio and aggression, while their English counterparts played with fear and caution, followed by what looked like mindless folly.

And while this was going wrong, the captain appeared a passive observer, watching what was happening rather than trying to bend it to his will.

It’s difficult to imagine a Brearley, a Boycott or a Botham allowing himself to behave in so powerless a way. Brearley would have spent his time in the slips working out a plan of his own and then how best to communicate it to the men who were charged with delivering it. Boycott would have worked out a plan and then how to deliver it entirely on his own without telling anyone else what he was was doing, least of all his own team. And Botham would have gathered all his strength and raged in of his long run, defying reality to resist the power of his desire. All of them may have failed, but they would all have failed more actively than England are failing at the moment.

Cricket is a game of defence and attack, and only a fool would deny it. But England at the moment are playing a version of cricket catenaccio, where all attacking intent is crushed out of the game in deference to an obsessively cautious plan. And when they need to find a way to attack, they lack the confidence and the personnel to do it successfully.

And the reason for this defensiveness? A lack of attacking pitches as much as a lack of attacking players. Surely with less lifeless surfaces Steve Finn wouldn’t have been remodelled in a vain attempt to give him an outswinger, and Stuart Broad would bowl more often at his maximum pace. More young bowlers would be tempted to run in hard, and more young batsmen would get the chance to play fast bowling effectively and with a sound technique (which only Ian Bell has looked like doing for England.)

But at the moment, what we need is a new plan. And a new captain to deliver it. Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen are two vital batsmen for England; two of the finest we have ever had, as the figures prove. England need them both batting. Captaining the side is an exhausting business, even without the added responsibility of opening the batting. Cook is one of the finest England openers ever. He is not – nor will he ever be – one of the finest captains. We should just let him get on with what he does best. Under a new, more aggressive regime.

What’s up with England?

What England seem to be lacking at the moment. Not a plastic gangster creating prog rap concept albums, but a version of his namesake.

We’ve already talked about England’s lack of a plan B when their strategy of slow accumulation followed by (equally slow) strangulation doesn’t work. And to be frank, it hasn’t worked for quite a long time now. It’s 18 months since England last posted a first innings total in excess of 400, so the slow accumulation has ground to a halt. In the mean time, so has the strangulation. In this summer’s Ashes, England won by dominating the crucial moments of games (what Malcolm Gladwell might call the tipping points) not by tightening an ever stronger grip: they depended more on outlandish individual feats than on collective exertion.

So it never seemed likely that the policy would prevail down under, particularly as two key elements of England’s preparation went awry, Australia caught them napping with a third, and they lost out in a crucial fourth area:

1) The key English batsmen carried their abysmal run on from the summer into the winter. Cook, the departed Trott, and even KP have really been scratching around for quite a long time now. It was hard to believe that Ian Bell, fine batsman though he is, could maintain his excellent form ad infinitum, especially as he has never seemed at his best when things around him are crumbling. So the accumulation of runs was looking less likely, especially as the original batting plan (Cook and Root to open, Gary Ballance at six) was disrupted first by Ballance’s poor form and Carberry’s excellence, and then destroyed completely by Trott’s departure. There is much talk of bringing in Ballance and Bairstow in Perth. They might not be so keen to come in themselves. It’s not easy to come into a team that is failing. Just ask any Australians who have been applied as elastoplast to staunch a haemorrhaging wound  in the last few years.

This tour is beginning to show some of the same signs as England’s appalling effort against Pakistan in the Gulf two winters ago. For mystery spinner then read Johnson now. But the effect seems to be the same: when the going gets tough, normally excellent batsmen get themselves out. They may talk about pressure, but from the outside it can often look as if they just want to come home because it’s all too hard. And somehow, Andy Flower doesn’t seem to be able to help them change their minds.

2) The bowling has not been penetrative. Proverbially, the Kookaburra doesn’t move like the Duke, but that didn’t seem to stop England last time out. Nor has it stopped Australia this time. Perhaps we missed signs of Jimmy Anderson’s powers fading in the summer, and of Swann’s diminished prospects against right-handers. After the first two tests in the summer, Jimmy frankly looked shot. We knew the Australians would target Swann, but he’s been outbowled by Monty Panesar, and his batting has suffered as a result. You could have got fairly long odds on Anderson and Swann being England’s least successful bowlers in the first two tests.

The nearest thing England had to a plan B at the start of the series was to use one of their tall but not very fast bowlers to knock the Australians back. Steve Finn seemed the most likely candidate before the journey to Oz, but he failed to control the flow of runs in the warm-up games. Chris Tremlett looked the same bowler as during the last Ashes down under, but unfortunately didn’t bowl like the same bowler. And Boyd Rankin is still very raw. Hence Ben Stokes taking the Chris Woakes role in the last test, with slightly more fortune. Whatever Andy Flower says about him, he doesn’t seem to be the answer to any of England’s questions right now.

Tim Bresnan will be fitter by the time the Perth test comes around, and might at least generate some reverse swing. He can bat a bit too, which matters if Swann isn’t playing. But there don’t seem to be any easy options for England. Sam Robson just made a century for the PCC, so maybe they could call him up.

3) The third aspect of England’s failure so far has been Australia. They gambled on Mitchell Johnson in Brisbane, and he delivered. He’s hard to get away when he’s bowling very fast, and he takes even the slowest and lowest pitch out of the equation when he pitches it up. None of England’s batsmen has much recent experience of playing express pace, and they’ve not got any better at it. Alastair Cook certainly looks like a man with a very stiff back when he tries to play it.

Johnson gave Australia confidence when they needed it most, right at the start in Brisbane. Before I turned in at five minutes to lunch on the second day of the first test, Johnson was spraying it down the legside, and Michael Clarke was wearing ‘that’ face. He hasn’t had to wear it since. Johnson found form and then more confidence and more form bowling in short bursts, Harris and Siddle understood their job was to keep it tight, Lyon discovered the topspinner, and the England batsmen kept bashing the ball obligingly to fielders on the on side. Their batsmen, playing on slow pitches with no turn to frighten them and few left handers for Swann to pick off, then grew in confidence too. Australia now believe they can win again, the media are united behind them and against England, and England have formed the wagons into a circle and started to bleat.

4) The fourth element in Australia’s rise has been luck. They have won two very good tosses. They might not win the next one. But by then it might be too late for England. There are times when a ‘method’ captain like Cook might be less helpful than a ‘character’ captain like Botham. Someone who would simply refuse to bow to the facts until there was no other option, whose response on the beach at Dunkirk would have been to gather a company of troops to march on Berlin immediately. England sorely need someone to convince them that they can still win this series. But it’s not easy to imagine who that person could be. Stuart Broad is the only player powerful, extrovert and talented enough to give it a go. Who knows if he’ll succeed?