Pietersen break gives Cook chance to seize the controls

IT is lambing season down on the farm and Alastair Cook will be thankful for the complete attention that farming demands.

IT is lambing season down on the farm and not for the first time in his career, Alastair Cook will have had good cause to be thankful for the complete attention that farming demands on his time and energies during his down periods from cricket. It will have insulated him to some extent from the very modern kind of public witch-hunt that is trial by blog and Twitter.

At least, in what appears to be a disconnect between the public mood and the decisions that have been made for the good of the England team, the ECB can console itself that the public still care. Any fear that cricket had become marginalised of late can be discarded, as I cannot remember a more divided or passionate response than that inspired by the decision to sack Kevin Pietersen.

How far the ECB cares about the cricketing public is another matter. One of the disturbing things about the press release on Pietersen was its reference to those “outside cricket” who had made their feelings known.

We all know to whom that was referring - and this special treatment was grist to Piers Morgan’s mill - but it was as wrong to single out one observer as it was to assume that those “outside cricket” are not entitled to pass comment. The England team remain the team who represent us, the supporters.

There are echoes, I suppose, of the cavalier versus roundhead argument highlighted by the rift between David Gower and Graham Gooch 20 years ago. It would be difficult to place Gower and Pietersen in the same category - Gower was never accused of divisiveness or untrustworthiness in the way that Pietersen has been - but there was a fundamental clash of culture and philosophy between him and Gooch, as there has been here.

A few young England cricketers who were on the Ashes tour are, by all accounts, a little bemused by what has been going on and by the extreme action taken by the ECB. I sympathise.

The Ashes tour of 1990-91, when the Gower-Gooch problem blew up, was my first England tour and I failed utterly to pick up the signs of the extent to which there was a breakdown between the captain and the most high-profile player. Tensions, yes, but no more than that.

Possibly this was because, as a young player, my entire focus was on proving myself and learning quickly in a tough environment. Young players are blinkered, by and large, and often impervious to the wider context of the team dynamic. Also, as with Gary Ballance and Joe Root, say, this winter, there is no history: I was new to things in 1990-91, and had no experience of the back story. Nor will England’s new boys, and with Pietersen especially the history and context is everything.

But as Pietersen slips from view - and he will - Cook must move England forward. This represents a great personal challenge on two fronts. The first is his off-field image. Has the ECB’s action strengthened him or weakened him in the eyes of the public and his team? When you need the teacher to act for you, others in the classroom might smell weakness. His supporters would argue he has taken a strong decision that may weaken England in the short term but strengthen them over time.

For the first time, he will have been made aware that he is not the nation’s favourite son-in-law material any more. Not that Cook has ever played simply to win popularity contests, but that the public have always been enamoured with his talent and manifest decency has never been in doubt, until now, when he has been portrayed in some quarters as an ECB stooge. Not so much one of us as one of them. This is new ground. The reaction to him will be interesting to note.

Image and reputation apart, his captaincy has never been better placed to have a personal stamp put upon it. Rarely in the past has the game’s governing body had to take such action to underpin “our captain”, as they termed it. They have made it as clear as they can that he is the man to take England forward, no matter the wishes of whoever is appointed to the team director’s role. It was a ringing endorsement, especially so on the back of an Ashes whitewash.

Once Cook returns to the helm, it really is the time for him to take control of the team. Up until now he has been leading what was essentially Andrew Strauss’s team, and there was no doubt that Andy Flower felt compelled to be more engaged with the team to help out his young captain than he had been under Strauss. The now infamous team meeting in Melbourne, encouraged by the management, was part of the process to try to get Cook to take more control.

Always, we have heard the line trotted out that he is learning as he goes along, but now England really need to see what Cook is made of as a leader. The move to ditch Pietersen was a first step in that regard, but only a first step.

This column has always kept an eye on corporate language and gobbledygook invading cricket. Last year we had players who had “contravened their conduct obligations” (had got pissed once too often) and had “excessive skinfolds” (were too fat). We were told that there were “tracksuited operatives” (coaches) running the show and that players had lost their “intellectual property” (your guess is as good as mine.)

Players continually “executed their skill sets” (played well) under “holistic management” (caring coaches) having identified their team’s “DNA” and “brand of cricket”.

Quite when, where and how this language came upon us I’m not sure, but it has something to do with the enormous sums of money sloshing through sport that has led to huge numbers of well-meaning hangers-on who feel a need to contribute somehow.

The use of complex language is designed to con us into thinking that these contributions are somehow meaningful.

Now Cricket Australia has given us a beauty. This week it announced that it had appointed Alex Wyatt to the newly created role of executive manager of strategy, government and people, effective May 2014.

That Wyatt’s previous engagements have been with Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company probably tells you all you need to know about the invasion of the management consultants.

Wondering where the millions of dollars extra will go that Cricket Australia has just awarded itself through the new ICC deal? Now you know.