Players' row stumps board

IT is impossible to know where to start with the events that have caused complete chaos within the England cricket team.

To lose both coach and captain on the same day, one sacked and one through resignation is a situation that should never have arisen. It seems that none of the main protagonists have had a hold on what was an ever-changing volatile set of circumstances.

Ultimately the ECB are responsible for allowing this to occur but Kevin Pietersen, the players and Moores also have played their part in leaving England in an embarrassing mess before a tour to the West Indies and also of course The Ashes in the summer.

When Pietersen was appointed the ECB must have known what kind of man they were putting at the helm of the national side. In reality, most onlookers believed that was why they were appointing him - a brash world class player who would take the fight to the opposition. His record of conciliation and popularity at previous clubs, particularly Nottingham, has been poor and resulted in his kit being thrown off the balcony by fellow players after some unwanted criticism of his teammates by the South African.

However, it became clear from an early stage that his relationship with Moores was strained and both had very different ideas about how to take the team forward. This growing rift had one inevitable conclusion and the ECB could well have done more to manage this and find a more satisfactory conclusion than the one that has developed.

Moores himself has suffered, as do all managers and coaches when results are poor, and has been sacked as a result. It is a tricky business trying to pull together as one team when there are a number of very strong personalities and egos within that group. A baseball coach once summed up being a manager as 'success depends on keeping the one player who knows you are poor away from the 10 who have not decided yet' and this appears to have gone some way to impacting on Moores' departure.

Pietersen had decided some time ago he could not work with Moores and whilst many other captains would have found a way and just been patient until he was gone he decided he wanted to do something about it immediately. This is the nature of the man and it is an attitude that cost him his job.

To express concerns about the coaching team is one thing, to give an ultimatum is another thing entirely and when the ECB sat down to discuss what to do they probably felt like they were being bullied into making a decision. To add further insult he was doing this from his holiday in South Africa which added to the perceived arrogance the board probably felt about him. If Pietersen was to have any hope of surviving he really needed to be in the country at least.

In reality, he was not only asking for the board to sack Moores, he was also pushing his influence to the extent that he wanted a say who the new coach would be and the ECB realised this and decide it was a step too far. Basically, in my opinion, Pietersen got greedy, thought he had more support than he did and backed the decision-makers into such a corner that it became untenable for him to remain in the post.

Hugh Morris was canvassing views from players and it became obvious to him that opinion was divided and dissenting camps existed within the team. Pietersen claims he had the full support of his teammates but he has now found out the hard way that what people say to your face is not always what they think and are willing to say privately.

Things were such a mess now that the ECB had no hope of reaching a compromise and ultimately its members were left with the only decision available to them, get rid of them both and start again ... and this is exactly what they did.

In Andrew Strauss they have given both the test and one day captaincy to a safe pair of hands but he has a long and difficult job to bring any kind of unity into this dissipated unit. However, it was not so long ago he had no form whatsoever and was fighting for his place and he has not played any one-day games for over a year. He is by no means a certainty for a place but I am not sure where else the ECB could turn as Flintoff has already lost any chance of getting the job again.

Disaster is too strong a word for a sporting calamity but everyone involved in this sorry situation should hang their heads in shame and it will be a long time before England recovers from this unfortunate set of events.