Phillip Hughes – from golden boy to Twitter in three Test innings. It’s hard to fully comprehend the logic of the decision to drop him for Shane Watson until you put it into context with the overall balance of the team. And therein lies Hughes’ problem. It's not that they really wanted to axe him but it's all part of the problem when a star player hits the skids. An opening bat for a fast bowler - that's the currency we're talking about today.

Hughes has effectively paid the ultimate price for Mitchell Johnson’s horror stretch it appears. Ironically, both players finished the South African tour riding the heady wave of success. Since then, Hughes has three indifferent innings in Test cricket, Johnson has had four bad innings with the ball so Hughes is dropped so Johnson can live to fight another day. That’s a team sport for you!

Even though the selectors may never admit as much, it sounds like the Hughes decision has been made to keep Johnson in the side rather than to drop Hughes per se. The balance of the side obviously required some insurance against Johnson’s form loss so rather than just swapping Johnson for Stuart Clark, it looks like poor old Hughes gets the rough end of the pineapple. Shane Watson, fine batsman that he is, can probably thank his bowling skills for his inclusion at the top of the order. Who was the last opening batsman selected for his bowling I wonder? Maybe back to the days when India used to pick a medium pacer just to get the shine off the ball for the spinners to do their magic.

If Watson succeeds in the role, that opens up Pandora’s box. Do they then persist with him and try to turn him into a poor man’s Jacques Kallis? Will his fragile body hold up to that workload? Who was the last opening batsman who averaged 4.67 in first-class cricket (as an opener) to have been selected at the top of the order. In some senses, Watson has nothing to lose. A streaky boundary through slip and he’s just about beaten his average for this batting position.

If Watson fails, is he owed a few bits of the cherry before he too is then unceremoniously dumped? Surely they must now persist with him for a few Tests, allowing him the luxury of some breathing space. Not that Hughes was afforded such courtesies mind you! This was a man who scored two Test hundreds in one game not so very long ago against arguably the best seam attack in world cricket, on their home pitches.

What happens if Johnson has another bad game and gets dropped? Does that mean the balance of the side is restored and Hughes comes straight back into the reckoning? That would be most unfair on Watson, regardless of whether he scores runs or not in this Test.

What it means is that Australia, for so long the bastion of loyalty and stability, has now set a dangerous precedent for the ‘chop and change’ culture that they took so much delight in vilifying England for. Clearly, recent form has no place in the current selector’s thinking. Marcus North must be a bit nervous in case Watson or Andrew Macdonald start coveting his place. After all, his last Test century was more than one Test ago!

While Australia tinkers with out-of-form selection headaches, England has the delicious opposite. Their biggest conundrum is whether to bring in the rampantly in-form Steve Harmison or stick with their winning formula. In this sense, I’d rather be in England’s shoes but one more poor showing from Stuart Broad, if it coincides with a loss, could spell curtains for him. He probably owes his spot in the team to Flintoff. Hughes owes his loss to Johnson.

Delicious ironies indeed – that’s why cricket is unsurpassed as a game of intrigue and utter fascination. Both teams are playing the same game but might as well be on different planets. Funny how one win at Lords, having just scraped a last-wicket draw at Cardiff, can change the course of someone’s career. Just ask Hughes. Or check out his Twitter page!

	Andrew Flintoff falls short of greatness but enriched the game in many ways © Getty Images

Samir Chopra has poured cold water over the idea that Andrew Flintoff's name should be added to the roll of great cricketers. He is of course right, but it is nevertheless significant that the question should even be worth discussing. When Paul Collingwood retires, for instance, any English paper bandying “great” around will also be carrying reports of the Pope's conversion to Scientology and its travel supplement will be featuring a guide to the exciting new ski resorts in hell.

Ricky Ponting has compared Flintoff to Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and Wasim Akram, Justin Langer rates him as one of the three best bowlers he's faced, and Adam Gilchrist has confessed to having nightmares about him. Michael Holding rated his spell on the fifth morning at Lord's as one of the greatest spells of fast bowling he had seen. His dismantling of Jaques Kallis was one of the indelible memories of last summer. These are not the memories of, nor tributes paid to, the journeyman bits-and-pieces player Flintoff's statistics seem to betoken, but ticks in several of the boxes on the application for membership of Great Players CC. Too few to qualify, but enough for him not to be dismissed out of hand.

Flintoff is one of those poignant characters discussion of whose career will usually include the words “if only”, the ones we might call the lost greats. Whether because of early death (Archie Jackson, Collie Smith, Duleepsinhji) or apartheid bans (Barry Richards, Mike Procter, Sylvester Clarke, Franklyn Stephenson) or other causes over which they had little personal control, we cannot help wondering what we would have thought of them if only they had had uninterrupted careers.

Michael Vaughan might have found the captaincy which consumed his mental energy a somewhat lesser burden after the triumph of the 2005 Ashes and reacquired the form which had propelled him to the number one ranking three years previously, but he quickly injured his knee and never really returned to full fitness. He doesn't qualify for GPCC either, but those who remember his sublime batting in 2002 and 2003 cannot but wonder what might have been.

Since he has never managed to play a Test against England, my opportunities to watch Shane Bond bowl have been very limited, so I am more reliant on statistics and hearsay than on personal observation, but if only his fitness had been more robust, surely there would now be arguments over whether he or Richard Hadlee occupies the number one spot in the history of Black Cap bowling.

Then there is the amazing saga of Shoaib Akhtar. If Flintoff can be held partly responsible for his own downfall, Shoaib gets twice as much blame. Sometimes he has been allegedly fit but has not turned up, sometimes he has turned up when obviously unfit, and at other times he has just been at loggerheads with the PCB, but seeing him charge in when he does play, his jet-black hair flopping around in an echo of Fred Trueman, has been one of the biggest thrills of the last decade or so.

No doubt, if all four had had continuous careers, one or more would eventually have fallen short of greatness, but all of them possessed a magic which lifted them above the common herd. But while we deny them the ultimate accolade, we should also acknowledge they have enriched the game in ways that those who were never candidates for greatness could not dream of doing.

Who else belongs on the list of lost greats? Academic though the question is, wistful nostalgia has always been an essential part of cricket chinwags, so I look forward to reading your nominations.

It has been a long time since I've felt genuine affection for an English cricketer. More precisely, since David Gower and Ian Botham packed up their kitbags and left. Freddie Flintoff stepped into the breach, and despite my initial viewing of him as a drunken soccer oaf, he managed to impress me with his ability to ratchet up the atmosphere in a Test match with his justifiably famous spells, to be combative with batsmen while not descending into puerile abusiveness, to hit the ball hard and long, and with all those other ineffable qualities that make disbelievers into
Freddie fans. Flintoff evokes feelings in me that remind me of my childhood following of cricket.

But in all of this, I have never considered Flintoff a 'great' cricketer just like I never considered many other darlings of mine (like Kim Hughes for instance) to be greats. And it dismays me to see that term thrown about so freely in this Ashes summer as the English media gear up, almost hopefully, for a final orgy of Freddie-anointing. Good yes, talented yes, mercurial yes, brilliant to watch yes. But great? No.

If one is to believe the emanations of the English press after the Lord's Test, it is possible for a bowler to be called great despite possessing the mediocre statistics that Flintoff does (he has, I might like to remind readers, not even taken three wickets per test over his career), for a player to be called a great Ashes performer despite leading his side to a 0-5 whitewash at the hands of the Great Enemy (and visibly losing all control of his team as the series wore on), for an allrounder to be called great despite only being able to swing an occasional match in favour of England with his bowling and batting.

While statistics do lie on occasion, there is something to be said for reserving the adjective 'great' for those cricketers able to maintain and sustain a high level of cricketing performance over an extended period of time. To call Flintoff a 'great' Test cricketer is to admit him to an exclusive club whose membership has taken far more work, dedication, skill and longevity on the part of its members than Freddie has been able to show.

Flintoff's famous injuries have managed to obscure the fact that he has not taken smart decisions with his body, in choosing to play certain games and not others. The Flintoff legend makes these injuries sound like the fates conspiring against him, a biological conspiracy of sorts. But reality is a little more prosaic than that.

Cricket fans are familiar with the archetypal figure of the talented-but-not-great cricketer: men who showed dazzling displays of brilliance but were unable to sustain it over their careers. These men provoke passionate defenses on the part of their fans that typically take the form of "You say X is a great cricketer but I'd rather watch a short innings by Y any day" and so on. These men encourage a disdain for statistics, for the stories the scoreboards and record books tell.

Flintoff will always prompt such defenses and it is tribute to him that he does so. I have defended him in similar fashion on my blog in the past. But I've done so knowing the charges against him have contained a kernel of truth.

A great cricketer leaves his mark on the game over an extended period of time, by performing well at home and away, by setting standards (yes, statistical ones too) for others to try and emulate, by being a pioneer in some fashion. Flintoff has come close to doing some of these things but he is not there yet.

Flintoff will always be remembered as a wonderfully exciting cricketer that managed to make a couple of Ashes series played in England the stage for some great cricketing theatre. But the rest of his career, his away performances, his inconsistency, his early retirement from test cricket, will ensure that he will not be considered a great cricketer - at least in the eyes of many folks who don't write for English newspapers.

	Mitchell Johnson had a match to forget © Getty Images

Are Test matches won or lost? The immediate reaction to a match usually focuses on the outstanding performances which can be said to have won it, but I often find it instructive to look at the weakest links which might be said to have lost it. Specifically, I have a hypothesis that you learn most about the difference between two sides by looking at their fourth-best bowlers.

Few substantial Test innings involve less than four bowlers. If you like, they form the four walls surrounding your castle. If the fourth wall is a rickety wooden fence rather than solid brick or concrete, then the cavalry can plunder through and run riot, negating the sturdy resistance being mounted around the rest of the compound. A fourth bowler who restrains batsmen as well as a colander holds soup allows the batting side the luxury of blunting the edge of your best bowlers and just waiting until the runs flow again, whereas a fourth bowler who manages to contain and even take important wickets allows no let-up – which means the batsmen have to take risks against the top men, thus increasing their chances of getting out to them.

At Lord's these last five days, Stuart Broad was England's fourth bowler and Mitchell Johnson Australia's. Broad's match figures were 34-4-127-3 and Johnson's 38.4-4-200-3. Broad's performance was of the not-too-bad variety while Johnson's was somewhere between poor and awful. Since England won, this is an observation of data which confirms the Fourth Bowler Hypothesis (or, to be more rigorous, does not disprove it).

At 23, Broad is still young enough to be classed as a promising up-and-coming player who has not yet mastered his trade, whereas Johnson is 27 and should be approaching his best. Broad's imperfections are therefore more to be expected and offer less cause for major concern than weaknesses in Johnson's game.

England have given try-outs to several young or youngish pace bowlers in recent years: what makes Stuart Broad stand out ahead of most of them is his steady absorption of lessons. On Saturday morning, he ran in and bowled bouncer after bouncer at Nathan Hauritz and Peter Siddle and was treated with as little respect as his poor execution deserved. It was nothing like the chin music with which Fred Flintoff has been serenading Phil Hughes – it was short-pitched dross. Even so, there was a big difference between that spell and the kind of tripe which was served up by the likes of Liam Plunkett, Saj Mahmood and Chris Tremlett: it was deliberate. It may not have been the best of plans and it may not have worked, but at least he was bowling to one. What a captain wants most from any bowler is that he should bowl to the field which has been set, and the best thing about Broad right now is that he is obviously doing his utmost to fulfil that requirement.

Mitchell Johnson, on the other hand, was clearly driving his captain to distraction at Lord's. He was nothing like the electrifying destroyer who had taken South Africa's batsmen apart over the winter. He had no control of length or direction, so his opening spells against Strauss and Cook on Thursday opened the gates of the Australian castle, let down the drawbridge and said “Come on in and pillage our gold.” He it was who allowed England to carry on building momentum after the great Cardiff escape, a momentum which carried England through to victory despite the lack of self-belief which saw them surrender the initiative on Sunday to such an extent that it was easy to imagine Australia setting a record for chasing which would be likely to stand for decades.

This is not an attempt to write Johnson off. Whereas the drop-off in Phil Hughes's performances since South Africa is owing to a weakness being identified and ruthlessly exploited, Johnson's deterioration is purely a loss of form. If or, more likely, when he recovers his composure and control, he will once again be a formidable bowler, but he needs to do so fast if he is not to be dead weight taking up space in the team which could be used far better by someone else in this series.

If the hypothesis is correct, then a comparison of fourth bowlers ought to shine a spotlight on how difficult the respective selectors' jobs are. Broad's problems are not so serious that they cannot be accommodated with the expectation that the experience he gains today will serve him well in years to come, whereas if Johnson continues in this vein he could lose the series for Australia.

	Matt Prior's 61 from 42 balls ensured that England fans were ready to give him another chance © Getty Images

When Matt Prior was first picked for England, the obvious suspicion was that he was the personal pick of incoming coach Peter Moores, the ex-wicketkeeper who had coached him all through his formative years at Sussex.

He made a very good impression with his debut innings, a swash-buckling century against West Indies at Lord's in 2007. Subsequent matches of the series revealed that the attack was seriously poor, which took some of the shine off, and his batting form anyway declined as the season progressed. The odd error in his keeping on debut could be put down to first night nerves, but if anything he got worse behind the stumps as well as in front as time went on.

Apparently fuelled by Moores's belief that wicketkeepers should make their presence felt, he made enough noise behind the stumps to make one recall Alec Stewart's over-the-top shouting with almost affectionate nostalgia for the good old days when people were only noisy when they had some credibility as players. He managed to alienate his county colleagues when appearing for them between internationals by missing no chance to remind them that he was now the England wicketkeeper and had scored a century on debut at Lord's.

Then he went to Sri Lanka, where he scored very few runs and missed approximately 73 routine chances, mostly off Ryan Sidebottom, which drops resulted in his taking the same medicine.

He was shocked, even more so when it became apparent how much glee there was at his downfall. His bubble of self-importance had burst in spectacular fashion.

The news that the England selectors had decided to recall him was greeted by many people with glum resignation. One had to admit that he did have a more convincing batting record than any of the candidates with better keeping credentials, and recent English batting has been far too fragile to admit weak links where they need not be. But he was there on sufferance.

He has clearly taken on board some of the criticism. Sitting in the stands, you hear the odd shout of encouragement, but the incessant inane jabbering is a thing of the past. His keeping is nothing to write hymns of praise to, but he will still be on the bowlers' Christmas card lists. This was improvement enough for his opponents to suspend active hostilities, at least pending developments.

His 61 off 42 balls at Lord's, though, means the war is over.

After enduring two hours of Ravi Bopara and an obviously lame Kevin Pietersen scratching around as though England could bat until Tuesday before they needed to declare, the crowd were aching for urgency and vitality, and Prior sprayed them with gallons of both. I think it was the flicked front-foot drive through extra cover down to the Tavern which got me hooked – or perhaps it was the all-run four which should by rights have only been two.

Lord's standing ovations usually take until the batsman is halfway back to the Pavilion for everyone to get up, and half-centuries very rarely get accorded a stander, but the entire ground (apart from a block of people wearing yellow sweatshirts in the Compton Stand who may possibly have been Australian) were on their feet as soon as it was confirmed that Marcus North's brilliant throw had run Prior out. The cheering was so loud that when Fred Flintoff appeared, the roar which greeted him sounded muted in comparison. In fact, it was even louder than the cheers and guffaws with which the crowd celebrated the repeated showings of Ponting spilling the simplest of slip catches. (I cannot remember a visiting captain being treated with such open contempt by an English crowd. Usually they're given at least the polite respect one might accord to the Grand Duke of Pomerania - given that one doesn't know exactly what a Grand Duke might be or where Pomerania is - when they're not being reviled as the nasty man who is being so rotten to our team by beating them so often, but Ponting is actively despised.)

We may yet spurn him, but Matt Prior will now have to do something spectacularly horrible to lose our affections. Tonight, he is English cricket's sweetheart.

I mean, what does it really mean? Does it exclude gamesmanship? Is it about promoting sportsmanship? Does outright cheating contradict this charter or is cheating itself a matter of being caught doing it? Is it about playing within the laws of the game but walking on the very edge of the line that separates black from white? Where do the umpires fit in to this charter – are teams only contravening this spirit if they question the umpire’s verdict? What about things like sledging, walking or claiming a doubtful low catch when no one but the player knows the real truth?

The fall-out from the thrilling finale to Cardiff Test match merely underscores the pointlessness of an amateurish concept like ‘the spirit of cricket’ in what is essentially a cut-throat, professional business. At the end of the day, it’s about the bottom line, it’s about winning. And it’s about not losing. How does something spiritual expect to exist in that sort of environment?

The only way for a noble but essentially irrelevant concept like this to meaningfully find its way back into cricket is for the ICC to take a firm position on what it stands for. Otherwise, it will simply become a toy gun conveniently toted by captains when it suits them. The moral high ground will merely become another cynical platform that floats on very thin ice.

For instance, what is the position on issues like walking or claiming dubious catches? Do we just leave all decisions to the umpire and accept them gracefully? Is it that “grace” that defines the spirit of cricket? Or does it go beyond a mere passive acceptance of a decision to actually walking when you know you’ve nicked it or not appealing for a catch that is clearly not out?

When it comes to the matter of sledging, is there an invisible line in the sand that all cricketers respect? Is race, religion or ethnicity placed on a higher moral plane than someone’s marriage or their sister’s alleged promiscuity or any other special category of insult designed to put them off their game? Who decides and who arbitrates? Are there special allowances to be made for cultural sensitivities and personal circumstances? Clearly, it is almost impossible to come up with a sensible line in the sand that all cricketers agree on. What’s deeply hurtful to one cricketer will be a laughing matter for another. What’s more, what might be a joke today might be a mortal wound tomorrow, even to the very same individual. So where does the spirit of cricket sit in relation to sledging or mental disintegration or any other fancy term that is used to legitimise verbal intimidation? Why is it just so-called ‘time-wasting’ that has got Ponting so worked up?

Who is judge and jury? Clearly the ICC has yet to come up with a system that is consistent and reliable. Gautam Gambhir gets suspended for making physical contact with Shane Watson by the English match referee, Chris Broad. Yet, when his own son, Stuart Broad, makes physical contact with Peter Siddle at a tense moment of a gripping Test match, the match referee sees no problem with that. That sort of inconsistency merely tempts players to test the boundaries. Ask the players and they’ll tell you it was all in the heat of the moment and they’re all big boys who can handle matters between themselves. Why was the Gambhir case not handled like that too then?

I did not recall seeing England complaining too much when the West Indies held out for a draw in Antigua recently. Strauss and his men simply accepted that it was a perfectly legitimate way to save a game. Leave it to the umpires. Similarly, when the roles were reversed, it was now England’s turn to adopt whatever strategies were available, including some fairly obvious stalling tactics, to save this Test. Australia did that in Old Trafford in 2005 when Ponting played a masterful innings. Until the umpires say otherwise, that is deemed to be an acceptable tactic for any team to adopt when faced with that situation. It makes a mockery of Ponting’s indignation - since when was the spirit only restricted to this tiny facet of the game? What about sledging or walking or gamesmanship or slow over rates or any number of other aspects of the modern game that all teams engage in when it suits them?

And how does Strauss keep a straight face when he claims that “our intentions were good”? Why not just come out and say “yes, we did everything possible to drag out the game and save the Test?” Where’s the shame in that?

In the end, it was left to Nathan Hauritz to bring some much-needed honesty to the debate by admitting that he would have done the same thing if the role was reversed. The only thing surprising about this whole episode is the ridiculous pretence that the spirit of cricket actually exists when there’s a game to be won or saved. For the spirit to be reincarnated, it needs to be an “all or nothing” approach to honesty and fair play. In an era where we now have third-umpire referrals, even for catches, it’s foolish to expect that.

	That James Anderson and Monty Panesar were able to hold out for 12 overs is eloquent testimony to the blandness of the surface © Getty Images

I would have made Paul Collingwood Man of the Match. His was the innings which decided the Test or, perhaps more correctly, undecided it. When people talk about this game in years to come, as they may, it will be his dogged resistance they recall rather than Ricky Ponting's characteristically crushing 150 – just as it was Ponting's innings which is remembered from Old Trafford 2005 rather than Michael Vaughan's or Andrew Strauss's.

At the end of that Old Trafford Test, Vaughan was able to hearten his deflated and frustrated side by pointing out that the team whooping with delight across the field was Australia, and they were celebrating a draw. It seems unlikely that Ponting would have been offering much comfort to his men if he tried something similar this evening. Rather, he has been reduced to the inevitable taking of positives, as Strauss had to do after the Tests at the ARG and Queen's Park Oval in the spring.

The problem England had then, as Australia did these last five days, was a pitch unfit for Test cricket because it provided a wholly unequal contest between bat and ball. It kept the ground packed for five full days, which was of course the commercial objective, but for cricket the last five days have been yet another travesty. ICC are making noises about making radical changes to Test cricket, but none of them will make any long-term difference to the popularity of the format while “chief executives' pitches” such as these remain as depressingly common as they are. Pitches like these are only really usable by great bowlers, and there were none playing in Cardiff this week.

That James Anderson and Monty Panesar were able to hold out for 12 overs is eloquent testimony to the blandness of the surface. Although there was little about their efforts with the ball for any of the bowlers to be pleased with, with the bat they did at least manage to compensate for the inadequacies of the alleged specialists. The slipshod efforts of Strauss, Alastair Cook, Ravi Bopara and Kevin Pietersen on day one led eventually to a compelling final couple of hours, but this match should have died halfway through day four when Australia passed England's first innings total of 516.

And no, KP, “That's just the way I play” won't wash this time. Nine times out of ten, it's a reasonable defense because the ball he was caught off was certainly there to be hit, but on Wednesday Hauritz threw it too wide for the sweep to be on – a reverse sweep, sure, but not the shot he chose. Let us hope that despite the wish to laugh it off in public, Pietersen has done some serious contemplation while lying awake.

In these days when players eagerly jump into baths of ice at the end of a day's play, a bucket of cold water is probably no longer some kind of shock for them, but less personally masochistic England fans who had believed these two sides were evenly matched have received the equivalent of a serious dowsing. But it means that England have made their best start to an Ashes series this century. They have comprehensively lost on all four previous occasions, with the result looking pretty much certain by the end of day one. So to have hung in at reasonable parity until lunch on day three and then to eke out a draw when all seemed hopeless is a distinct advance. Starving for good news as we are, this crumb of comfort seems like an entire cake right now.

	Cricket becomes fashionable to the English public once every four years © Getty Images

During the ICC World Twenty20, our esteemed editor was struck by the lack of hoopla as he strolled up to The Oval. There was little sign that a world championship was taking place, and he then went on to suggest that the ECB had concentrated on marketing the Ashes.

Well, maybe, except that if there is an event which the ECB do not have to market at all, it’s the Ashes. In the run-up to a series against anyone else, there are interviews with England players and tourists on the sports pages of the newspapers but as an Ashes series approaches, the features editors and news editors muscle in on the act, the players get interviewed by the same people who interview Hollywood stars and politicians and the results appear in the colour supplements and stories about the build-up appear in the news section. It is not the judgement of the ECB that the Ashes is the most important thing there is, but the view of news editors in what used to be Fleet Street.

The bulk of the English public have the same attitude to cricket that I have to swimming: most of the time I couldn’t care less about it, but when the Olympics come round, I’ll be as glued to the TV as anyone else. And then I forget about it for another four years.

Since I’m not a swimming buff, I just take it for granted that the Olympics is the premier swimming event which deserves my attention. The news desks of the press and broadcasters make a big thing of it, so it must be, mustn’t it?

In fact, all it indicates is that that’s how the news desks think. Not every sporting event which is deemed to be news rather than sport is the premier event to those in the know. There must be more important events in rowing than Oxford v Cambridge, but you would never know that from the newspapers. The Derby and Grand National are the big horse races of the year on the front pages, but they may not be so regarded by real racegoers.

England v Australia was the top cricket clash for nearly a hundred years. The West Indies emerged as challengers in the fifties, South Africa in the sixties, and the rest came later, but by then it was too late. The Ashes had become woven into English culture as an institution, but England v Anyone Else is merely cricket.

It does not really matter what cricket folk think. We all knew in the 1980, 1984 and 1988 that West Indies were the top side and that the Australian teams which came in 1981 and 1985 were pretty moderate lots, but the news editors couldn’t care less. West Indies thrashing England at cricket could not be news in an Olympic year: the public who aren’t fans of particular sports can only swallow one event other than Wimbledon each summer: leap years the Olympics, the following year the Ashes, the next year the FIFA World Cup, and whatever Great Britain or England (depending on which sport) has a chance of winning in the other year. Cricket tried to occupy that other year with the World Cup - held in England in 1975, 1979 and 1983 – but then the rest of the world demanded its slice of the action, and since then it has largely clashed with the football season, which renders it virtually invisible.

Every Ashes series, unlike every other cricket event in England, begins in the glare of national publicity and stays there until England have lost, just as Wimbledon is a big story until the last Brit loses.

It all starts again tomorrow, and I’m hoping that the press will still be interested in writing about it after 24th August

	Martyn appears to be keen to join the list of cricketers who now view the John Buchanan era in a far less favourable light © Getty Images

With less than a week to go before the Ashes series begins, perhaps both teams might do us all the courtesy of telling us whether they think they are well prepared for the series or not? Anyone can make excuses after the event – let’s hear the truth before it all starts so that we can then judge the final outcome with all grudges and platitudes aired beforehand.

The graceful Damien Martyn, he of silken touch and impeccable balance with bat in hand, appears to lack that poise in a recent interview that is as clumsy as it is ungracious. In dissecting the 2005 Ashes loss, Martyn appears to be keen to join the list of cricketers who now view the John Buchanan era in a far less favourable light than at the height of the Australian dynasty.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not here to defend Buchanan or any other coach for that matter. I’m firmly in the camp of those who think that this modern preoccupation with multiple coaches and support staff is a case of massive overkill. What is amusing though is the number of cricketers who seem to enjoy sinking the boot in to the easy target – the coach – after a series is completed and lost.

Martyn appears to echo the long-held views of Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill in being anti-Buchanan. No surprises there. Recently, Warne has been on a mission to rubbish just about everybody in the game (Ravi Bopara for example) so his comments about Buchanan are consistent at least. He has never been a big fan of coaches per se, not until he became one himself for the Rajasthan Royals. All of a sudden, a coach was no longer a mode of transport but an essential part of a cricket team’s personnel. I even heard him claim, ridiculously, that a coach was more important in T20 cricket than in any other form of the game. OK Warnie, time for another slimming tablet from Mummy. We believed that story too!

Back to Martyn’s comments though; he seems to insinuate that the preparation for that series in 2005 was a shambles and that it contributed significantly to the surrender of the Ashes. Looking back through the archives and relying on my imperfect memory, I can’t recall any such complaints before the series started. In fact, after the crushing victory in the First Test at Lord's, it was business as usual, a mere formality to crush the hapless Poms blah blah blah. No suggestion then of poor preparation or an unhappy camp.

Likewise England’s Ashes Tour of 2006/07. Duncan Fletcher arrived on tour with halo glowing and finished the tour with reputation tarnished. If the preparation and coaching was so poor (like 2005 for Australia), why did the senior professionals not address the issue and make changes? Because, like Martyn, it’s easier to wait to see the final result and then look for excuses everywhere but in the mirror.

Martyn’s complaints don’t just stop with the coach. He goes on to talk about poor umpiring decisions (oh good, that’s a new one – never heard that excuse before!), a lack of hunger because the Ashes apparently meant more to England than to Australia (oh really, the Ashes were only a minor distraction from the main series against Zimbabwe or Bangladesh were they?) and a little dig at Cricket Australia for “beefing people up” with unrealistic expectations. Refreshingly, he goes on to admit that Australia’s focus had apparently shifted from the preoccupation with the Ashes to other things like winning the World Cup and winning on the Subcontinent. Hmmm…admirable but not wholly believable I’m afraid. I can’t recall hearing such noble global awareness before the Holy Grail was surrendered.

The problem with retrospective excuses is that they always end up sounding a bit lame. During the Ashes in 2005, Martyn complained about the infamous Pratt run-out of Ponting, claiming that Australia rarely used the best fielder but the 12th man who was usually a big, burly fast bowler. He conveniently forgot that Australia’s substitute fielder, Brad Hodge, caught Pietersen and Vaughan in the previous Test at Old Trafford. Hodge was not the 12th man in that Test and he is arguably a much better fielder than Kasprowicz so it made a mockery of the indignation that came with the Ponting run-out. At the end of the day, it was a brilliant piece of fielding and a poorly judged run. That’s cricket.

So, before this Ashes series kicks off in earnest, please come out and tell us how you really feel. Are you well prepared? Is it the most important thing on your minds or are you distracted by something else? Is there a problem in the camp or is it all rosy between captain, coach and senior players? Was there enough time after the T20 World Championship to acclimatise to the red balls, white clothing and the different demands of Test cricket? Let’s get everything out in the open, both teams, excuses and morale-boosting statements alike and let’s get on with it. And may the best team win.