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When Mickey Arthur was unceremoniously given his marching orders in the lead-up to the 2013 Ashes, it was a development that was both surprising and the opposite.
A side producing unsatisfactory results and suffering internal strife meant action had to be taken.
The proof, even though it was definitely a blind bet at the time, has been in the pudding, and Darren Lehmann’s ascension can now be viewed as something of a masterstroke.
I would hesitate slightly at putting England in the exact same boat, but there is a feeling that matters are about to come to a head and it may be the rush towards yet another Anglo-Australia tussle that proves the tipping point.
Paul Downton’s removal from the position of England managing director last week was, as with Arthur, both cause for raised eyebrows and ‘I told you so’ remarks.
It followed 15 months of management that can be safely shepherded towards the category, for want of a better word, of disastrous.
There was the sacking of Kevin Pietersen and subsequent inept efforts to handle the fallout, the appointment of Peter Moores for a second term as coach (although that hasn’t backfired badly as of yet), the removal of Alastair Cook from the one-day captaincy a few weeks before the World Cup, and numerous public attempts to justify such blatantly bad decisions.
All in all a catalogue of mishaps that – with a new chief executive in situ and chairman who takes other reins in the middle of next month, the latter who has made a name for himself by being unafraid of threatening abrupt and decisive action – had to produce a tangible outcome.
Change for change’s sake is the curse of sporting organisations and even though cricket is far more conservative than its winter cousins, it isn’t immune. But every now and then a purge, even if it is of a solitary tier of management, can be a good thing, and while the copying of all things Australian has been left back in the 1990s, their realisation that something had to be altered a couple of years ago had merit.
If England don’t beat West Indies handsomely, or only edge them out, and struggle against New Zealand on home soil, then the clamour for more blood-letting will reach an even more shrill level. And whether or not that comes to pass, the wind is blowing, with ever increasing force, in the direction of change.
A couple of poor results is generally enough for those with low tolerance to get on their high horses, but this is not a team with a solid ledger of success behind them and plenty of credit in the proverbial bank.
The Test side of things, as it stands, isn’t all doom and gloom whatever those who can’t see past the 5-0 whitewash of 2013-14 may think, but the other ingredients are conspiring to ruin the recipe somewhat.
A one-day outfit shown to be woefully off the pace in the World Cup has hardly helped matters, and neither has the incessant speculation surrounding Cook’s position at the helm of the Test team.
It doesn’t constitute a crisis, just as the Australians weren’t in that oft-referred to state, but all is not as it should be and if I was a coach of good standing with an eye on getting involved in the international scene I would be tidying up my CV as we speak.
The only way, and it was ever thus, that all of the noise, negativity and general nonsense will go away is if the Ashes urn is being held aloft by Cook at The Oval in August. The defeat Down Under created this situation and only a reversal of fortune will make amends.
Two years ago, Cricket Australia decided they’d had enough. Very soon, their English counterparts are going to reach the same conclusion.