Fletcher is not to blame for England fiasco

There is something a touch cruel, almost medieval, about the decision to summon the England coach, Duncan Fletcher, to Lord's today of all days. But then we are talking about the England and Wales Cricket Board. Enlightened crowd control, according to its chairman, Lord MacLaurin, is to release a pack of snarling dogs.

Fletcher is obliged to go to Lord's, presumably in shirt and jacket rather than sackcloth, on a day when his recent torturers, Australia and Pakistan, are due to provide further evidence of why their cricket has a depth and brilliance about which we can still only muse as occupants of another, lesser planet.

Enough, surely, that Fletcher, the battle-hardened, proud old pro who has done so much so quickly to bring England's Test match cricket within the realms of respectability, should have been so relentlessly outgunned in the triangular series which, given fair weather and a reasonably reflective crowd mood, is likely to produce a thrilling climax? Apparently not.

Despite the disclaimers of the ECB, Fletcher is the penitent today, a status that might only be more clearly emphasised if they put up stocks on the lawn where MCC members have their picnics so that he could be pelted with abandoned bits of game pie.

What can Fletcher really tell cricket's Star Chamber? That with more careful planning and judicious selection England might have made a fist of competing with teams of vastly greater talent and experience? That decades of declining standards, of trundling, increasingly marginalised county cricket, of graveyards filled with young English cricketers of talent who were never given the extended chance or the faith with which they might have made something of themselves, could be wiped away in a few months of positive thinking? The idea is risible. Plainly, the ECB has missed the point of the terrible shellacking received over the last few weeks.

Desperately, England's stand-in one-day captain, Alec Stewart, has attempted to separate utterly the triangular series from the upcoming Ashes. He says that the one-day game and Test cricket cannot be compared, and of course he is right in terms of tactics and the sweep of play. But there is a broader dimension here and the more you travel it the more you see how much ground Fletcher and his Test captain, Nasser Hussain, have had to cover simply to make England competitive at the top level.

In one-dayers, with Hussain, Thorpe and Craig White injured, England's slender resources have been cruelly exposed. No, this has not been about the differences between the one-day and Test games but cricket cultures which are viable and those which are not. Those of Australia and Pakistan, we have seen so vividly, are, and luminously so. England's is not.

In the latest catastrophe at The Oval the local hero, Ben Hollioake, was alone in beginning to match the confidence and panache of such as Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist, which provoked again the question raised by The Independent's cricket correspondent, Derek Pringle, a few weeks ago: where has Hollioake been these last four years? Dying, along with England's hopes of winning the World Cup, on the vine.

England's 11th successive one-day defeat was indicative not so much of a failure to come to terms with an aspect of cricket but the heart of it. Inevitably, given the numbers involved, some Englishmen – Thorpe, Hussain, Mike Atherton, Darren Gough – are able to announce their credentials in any company, but the nucleus of such character and talent is still dismayingly thin.

The timing of the summons to Fletcher implies there is some kind of instant remedy tantalisingly just beyond the reach of the experienced and knowledgeable coach. There isn't. Fletcher for the moment is no different to the most callow of his charges. He is a prisoner of the English cricket culture, one which for so long preserved a way of playing utterly remote from the edge and the competitive values of places like Australia and the subcontinent. Clearly a little shell-shocked, Fletcher said at The Oval that promising young players like Owais Shah and Paul Collingwood have to "learn experience." Of course, Fletcher knows better than anyone, you don't learn experience. You experience it. You become familiar with the demands of hard competition in direct proportion to how much exposure you are given. If you are lucky, you receive a little investment, a little belief.

We will see again today the dividends of such an approach. We will see, for one, Yousuf Youhana, a 26-year-old who has scored six centuries in Test cricket and three in the one-day game. We will see a player of beautiful strokeplay who can wear the hat of a classicist as well as a hustler. You wouldn't want to categorise a Yousuf, any more than you would a magnificent strokeplayer like Ponting. You would just want to see them grow, evenly, and sure in the knowledge that their ability has been recognised and is trusted enough not to be swept away in a run of bad results.

The truth is that if today's game is potentially a glory of cricket it is also a rebuke for England. The leadership of Steve Waugh has carried Australia to a point where all those hopes of an evenly fought Ashes series, fostered by England's run of Test victories over Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, could scarcely look more fragile. The authority of Waugh, the superb attack of Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and the new sensation, Brett Lee, the aura of Shane Warne, the capacity of Ponting and Adam Gilchrist to ravage any bowler, will fill Lord's with evidence of a cricket nation at the top of its powers.

Pakistan have rekindled pride and blazing talent. They throw in the ferociously brilliant Waqar Younis, the old warrior Wasim Akram, the spin doctor Saqlain Mushtaq, the sublime sluggard Inzamam-ul-Haq, and a potential match-winner like Yousuf.

Against such a firmament, Duncan Fletcher's inherited resources have simply been inadequate. That, and the real progress he has made at the Test level, should be remembered when he walks into Lord's today. Any missiles, verbal or otherwise, directed at him will be going in the wrong direction.