In the name of God, go

Things have been moving quite quickly today – although whether events are leading to any kind of proper resolution remains to be seen.

We know now that the Dark Lord will deign to speak to the media tomorrow. Already our expectations have been lowered. What was first rumoured as a press conference to address the Moores/Cook balls-up (or even to announce the latter’s resignation) is now being described by the Hack Pack as a long-arranged chat about his first year in the job.

Which was gone really well, hasn’t it?

I’ll discuss Downton’s emergence from hiding in a separate post. First, I wanted to focus on the overnight story – did Peter Moores say, or not, that Alastair “Cooky” Cook might be sacked as ODI captain?

The England coach has been muddying the waters, and then, in attempting to demuddy them, only confused things further.

After yesterday’s series-losing 90-run thrashing in the sixth ODI, Moores spoke to Ian Ward on Sky Sports, and when asked about Cook’s future, said:

Initially these comments were widely interpreted as casting serious doubts over Cook’s future. Here’s how they were reported by Scyld Berry in the Telegraph and Andy Martin in the Guardian, both of whom inferred that Moores had in effect announced a formal review of Cook’s tenure.

If this was a Carry On film, Peter Moores would be the character whom Kenneth Connor calls “a steaming great nit”. The man is a 2014, management-theory version of a 1950s nincompoop – his Wellingtons tragi-comically sinking into a verbal quagmire of cliche, self-contradiction, and the bleeding obvious.

What did he actually mean?

On our own comments board, John came up with a fine analysis.

The interesting thing about the Moores interview for me is his use of the passive. It’s has such a strong tinge of British management-class weaselling about it. You state that the candidate has your full personal support, but carefully invoke a sense of forces gathering against him.

My best guess is that we’re watching a practised corporate shapeshifter positioning himself for the long game ; a fine afternoon pursuit sometimes enjoyed by former professional cricketers where the aim is to infiltrate the ECB’s political superstructure and then burrow your way to the brain stem to inject a stream of absolutely terrible ideas for just as long as you can possibly manage to clamp on.

Whatever Moores was actually thinking or meant (and remember, the chair of selectors, not he, decides who’s captain), he soon received the midnight knock on the door from the Downton Gestapo. Within hours he was desperately back-peddling, as reported by Lawrence Booth in the Mail on Sunday.

The England coach did his best to play down suggestions that there remained any doubt about Cook’s World Cup role. In that, he was not always successful.

‘It hasn’t changed,’ said Moores. ‘Alastair is announced as captain of our World Cup team. But I’ve said on every tour we go on, it will be wrong not to go back and look at everything that’s happened with the other selectors.

‘That’s the way it should be. It’s fair to the public that way. We’ll do exactly the same this time. But Alastair is our captain, and nothing has changed on that front for the moment.’

This morning [after the ambiguous Ward interview], it was still possible to read between the lines. ‘Alastair has said very clearly that he is very keen to carry on, and wants to remain as captain of England,’ said Moores.

‘He knows nobody has got the guarantee of that. I hear someone say no one’s unsackable. That would be a ridiculous comment.

‘We’ve got four selectors, and we always pick what we think is the best team – and that will be no different moving forward.’

It is more likely, amid the current climate of dissatisfaction at Cook’s batting and England’s one-day results, that Moores is simply trying to avoid being seen to rubber-stamp the future of a struggling captain.

Talk of being ‘fair to the public’ feels like a bit of a sop: it is only eight days since Cook was confirmed as World Cup captain, and it would be an embarrassing admission of failure by the management to change their minds now.and we always pick what we think is the best team – and that will be no different moving forward.’

Moores may also be reluctant to pre-empt the discussion he will have after this is over with fellow selectors James Whitaker, Angus Fraser and Mick Newell.

None of this farrago would be necessary if either (a) Cook had the decency and dignity to quit, or (b) his bosses possessed one iota of honour or common sense. If they had, Downton and Whitaker would have put Iron Rod out of his (or rather, our) misery months ago.

On Cricinfo, George Dobell summed up not only the stats but the logical absurdity of the situation.

Cook has now scored one half-century in his last 21 ODI innings. It is 30 months and 45 innings since he reached 80 in an ODI. And to make his embarrassment all the more acute, the only ODI series England have won this year came in the Caribbean when Cook (and other 50-over players) were rested to provide opportunities for the shorter-format specialists ahead of the World T20. The last time England won an ODI series under Cook was in New Zealand at the start of 2013, meaning they have won one of the last nine ODI series under his captaincy.

That an England camp bursting with analysts and statisticians have ignored such figures is puzzling.

Increasingly, though, Cook’s ODI captaincy appears untenable. The reprieve of Sangakkara might prove to be the final straw. Cook has, of late, seemed to drop everything but himself.

Among other comment, this piece by blogger Dmitri Old’s is unimprovable. And in the Independent, Stephen Brenkley – who seems to blow one way then t’other – manages to stumble on to some perceptive points here:

A player mutiny? In the environment of a squad whose former coach (a confidante of the current incumbent) encouraged players to spy on their team-mates and report back to him evidence of insurrection? Amid a culture in which people get sacked for looking out of the window?

It won’t happen, and almost certainly, neither will Cook leave the captaincy – either by his own volition, or Paul Downton’s.

If you’ve read this blog before, you might have noticed I continually hark back to the sacking of Kevin Pietersen. “You sound like a broken record”, some might say. “Move on!”.

The reason I keep returning to it is continued relevance. Like a cricketing Big Bang, that event created and defined the universe in which we now live – and is the exact cause of the current fiasco of Cook’s disintegrated captaincy.

By removing Pietersen, on the most flawed grounds and without proper explanation, Paul Downton was taking a hugely controversial decision which invited such scrutiny and criticism that he is now left with no room for manoeuvre. He staked his own position, in its entirety, on Pietersen’s fate.

His folly was infinitely compounded by citing the centrality in importance of Cook’s captaincy as the prime justification for firing Pietersen.

It’s left the ECB with nowhere to turn, especially as they’ve countered every subsequent criticism of Cook with rebuttals which can essentially be summarised as: “he’s a class act, has immense character, he’s still learning the job, he will come good, and his form will return”.

If they sack Cook now, it will be an admission that they’d got it wrong all along. They will have to concede that we – Cook’s critics among the great unwashed – were right.

Downton is not going to do that.

For one thing, he can’t argue that Cook’s poor form and inadequate captaincy is a new problem they couldn’t have have foreseen. He was batting like this, and leading the side so ineptly, long before Downton decided to bet the house on him. In fact, Cook had reached his utter nadir at the precise moment the ECB pledged to reconstruct the England side around him.

But, I hear you say, isn’t it only the ODI role which is no longer untenable? Can’t he quietly slip away from 50-over cricket but continue, unruffled, at the test helm?

Hardly. The case for Cook has almost entirely been built on his character and qualities. He is the right man to lead England to the World Cup, his proponents maintain, because:

– He can rise to and overcome any challenge.

– He has inner steel.

– He is a born winner

– At only 29, he is still developing into the formidable captain he will eventually become.

But if Cook relinquishes the ODI captaincy, all those arguments are blown apart. Because it will constitute an admission that the role defeated him, that he wasn’t good enough, and that in truth his character doesn’t have the strength to withstand the pressure. His supposed steel will be shown up as the myth we all suspect it to be. He will be less Iron Rod than Dairylea Triangle.

And if he lacks the resolve and tenacity to captain in 50 over cricket, how can he have what it takes to lead the test side against Australia?

It will be game over. Once Cook concedes a failure of any kind, the case for him remaining as test captain crumbles within seconds.  And that’s before you even reflect on the fact that his replacement as ODI skipper immediately becomes an heir apparent for the senior job. TINA collapses.

There is no way out, either for Cook or the ECB. Paul Downton has ensnared himself in a trap of his own making. He set the controls for a one-way flight and the computer won’t let him switch back to manual. Now he finds his vessel is hurtling to disaster, taking us and all of English cricket with him.