Methinks Mr Downtons best qualities are found working in the city....
Amusing assessment of Downton's performance
"Does anyone else think that Downton's appraisal of the situation on arriving in Australia was perhaps a little, er, inaccurate?
Based on his testimony, the only problems that needed addressing were Andy Flower's future and that of Kevin Pietersen's 'disengagement' from the rest of the team.
Am I the only one who thinks that even a deaf, dumb, blind and comatose geriatric would have noticed that England's problems went a little deeper than that?
That a tour which set a new benchmark for ineptitude might have roots in a widespread failure to identify cracks appearing in the England edifice?
That our batsmen had failed to post a meaningful first innings score for a long time.
That our bowlers were incapable of blowing away the opposition's tail like they used to?
That our fielding had deteriorated markedly?
That our captain was about as inventive in the field as a breeze block, and as capable of motivating his team as an industrial dose of ketamine?
That our coach had been promulgating a brand of cricket that last worked 2 years ago and had since been well and truly worked out by leading teams?
Look too at our subsequent performance in the T20 World Cup.
Why, exactly, was it a makeshift team?
Had the tournament crept up on England by surprise?
Had the ECB and Ashley Giles forgotten it was happening, and only belatedly cobbled together a side?
Where was the forward-planning, the over-arching plan to develop excellence in all three forms of the game?
I wish Moores well, I really do, but that press conference left me utterly dismayed. He's obviously a decent chap, but his win percentage last time round was in the 30s for Tests and ODIs, which isn't good enough, and he lost the dressing room (not just Pietersen).
But more depressingly, we're still stuck with a weak, gutless skipper (did anyone else notice how uncomfortable Cook looked throughout, given it was the 4th 'Dawn of a new era' in recent weeks?), and an administrator who has so little grasp of what's actually wrong with English cricket.
And to cap it off, the ECB has poached the opposition's coach weeks before they arrive for a make-or-break series - that is unbelievably dishonorable