ENGLAND CRASH TO WEST INDIES.

Yet another hopeless performance by an England team.

Alastair Cook, fine batsman though he has been, has proved to be no good as a captain. Jonathan Trott, a man with a history of breaking under pressure, has been brought back as an opening batsman, probably the most pressured position in the order, and has failed. Moeen Ali, an excellent middle order batsman, has been expected to also be the team's principal spin bowler, which he is not up to. Jos Buttler, an exciting one day batsman, is simply not good enough as a Test Match wicket-keeper. All-in-all, this England team has too many players who shouldn't be there.

That said, English cricket as a whole is in a mess. Infighting at the top and regular changes in the domestic calendar don't help. Concentrating on one-day games and 20-20 knock-abouts to the detriment of the longer format of the County Championship has ensured that we produce few players competent to play Test Match cricket. Indeed, most of our Test Match players rarely, if ever, appear in the County Championship and a handful of appearances in shorter games is the most that the supporters of County sides can hope for.

Of course, the shorter format competitions bring in much needed money but they have also destroyed our traditional county cricket, which was the breeding ground for the Test Match team. Now, we have hordes of players who may be brilliant at 20-20 but are temperamentally unsuited to 5-day cricket; we also select captains on the basis of their performance as batsmen, something that is fine in schoolboy cricket but a recipe for disaster once the schoolboys have grown up.

Until someone gets a grip on all of this, England will continue to struggle in the international sphere of Test Match cricket. So-called 'experts' and 'pundits' will voice their opinions, always fro the viewpoint of insiders; the likes of Ian Botham, Mike Atherton, David Gower and co., are all part of the cricketing establishment and far too close to the people involved to do more than keep repeating the same tired clichés.

This is not something that is specific to cricket. England's football, tennis, golf, athletics and much more all suffer from the same disease. Until we change our whole sporting culture, we will continue to fail at these, and many other, sports.