Let's face it, English cricket is in crisis

One year out from the Ashes, English cricket is in crisis and captain Alastair Cook must go.

Rather than rebounding from their 5-0 smashing in Australia last summer, the England Test side has fallen into the abyss with a humiliating home series loss to Test lightweights Sri Lanka now all but a certainty.

After England frittered away a golden chance to win the first Test, they then capitulated from a dominant position in the second and final Test to leave Sri Lanka in a position from which they almost could not lose.

English fans and its cricket media were cock-a-hoop on the second day of this most recent Test at Leeds, as England took a 21-run first innings lead with just two wickets down. Talk of a 300-run lead and an innings victory evaporated as England lost their final 8 wickets for 77. Combined with their woeful start to the crucial second dig, England lost 13 for 134.

In between those two collapses, Sri Lanka made the Headingley deck look like a featherbed, amassing 457 against a limp English attack to set the home side a 350-run chase (England have never tracked down more than 332 in Test history).

It was the limpest, most embarrassing of surrenders from an English side which it seemed could not slump any further after its abominable effort in Australia.

Granted, Sri Lanka are worthy of tremendous praise, having played with admirable spirit, belief and skill. But that does not change the fact they are a very weak Test side, ranked seventh in the world above only the calamitous West Indies among the main playing nations.

Sri Lanka had won just 9 of their past 41 Tests, stretching back almost five years. Most significantly, they are famously fragile away from home, with just two wins overseas during that long period.

Facing Sri Lanka on home soil was almost the gentlest reintroduction to Test cricket England could have had in the wake of their Ashes mauling. Yet they have been brutally exposed, once again.

At the core of this rotten apple is captain Alastair Cook, who has not made a significant score in more than a year and continues to be exposed for his reactive, unimaginative and timid captaincy.

As far as Cook’s form trough goes, it is unfortunate. All players experience these periods of difficulty and it is very likely he will come out the other end and return to being a consistent, valuable run scorer. But England needs him to do that immediately. He and Ian Bell are the only experienced batsmen in the top six, surrounded by green, unproven players.

The continued faltering of his team appears to be dragging Cook under water. He should be relieved of the captaincy.

Not only could it ease the pressure on him and potentially fast track his return to form, it would also free the side of one of its greatest weaknesses – Cook’s incessantly boring and meek leadership.

When England had a team brimming with established, in-form stars it managed to get away with playing negative, safety-first cricket. But the departures of champion spinner Graeme Swann, veteran first drop Jonathan Trott and match-winning strokemaker Kevin Pietersen, coupled with the decline of wicketkeeper Matt Prior, has left England a shade of their former self.

They now field a line-up with a modest degree of talent. As such, to win Tests and series they will need sometimes innovative and consistently assertive captaincy. Cook’s steady-as-she-goes approach will see them fail to seize the decisive moments in Tests. This occurred repeatedly over the recent back-to-back Ashes series.

In the first of those series he was not punished for it, thanks to the woeful underperformance of the Australian batting line-up, together with the fact he still had an assured, accomplished and talent-laden side. But in the return series Down Under his ineptitude as a leader was laid bare. The same story has been told against Sri Lanka.

Despite pre-series talk of a new, more attacking England, their tactics have been as uninspiring as ever.

Late on the fourth day of the first Test England were in a perfect position to capitalise on their impressive play to that point. Rather than declaring and forcing the Sri Lankan openers to face a nightmare spell against the new ball before stumps, Cook opted to bat on until the close.

It seemed that, instead of pushing for the win, the priorities were first to ensure that they could not lose and second to give greenhorn batsman Gary Ballance time to make his century.

Predictably it backfired and England ran out of time to secure the final wicket they needed to win the Test.

Then, on the decisive fourth day of the second Test, Cook’s sheepish strategies again ran England aground. Sri Lanka began the day behind in the game, four wickets down with a modest lead of 106 and a long tail to come.

The two batsmen at the crease, veteran champion Mahela Jayawardene and captain Angelo Mathews, were the crucial wickets – the men capable of turning the match. Yet Cook allowed both of these fine batsmen to comfortably play themselves in by setting deep fields from the first over. Jayawardene and Mathews gleefully accepted the opportunity for easy singles while they acclimatised to the conditions.

Cook regularly afforded the same luxury to Australia’s lower order in the last Ashes and was repeatedly burned as a result. He didn’t learn from those experiences and it cost England. Mathews made 160 and Jayawardene 79, all but batting Cook’s side out of the match. It was just reward for atrocious captaincy.

Ian Bell is the man favoured by English cricket pundits to replace Cook as skipper, should he step down or be axed. If this changeover does occur, Bell must walk a different path than his predecessor or England will remain in the doldrums.

They will also very likely receive another thrashing from their oldest adversaries when Australia tour for next year’s Ashes.

That is unless England’s newest import, Aussie opener Sam Robson, can save them.