James Lawton: Sickening loss rooted in English lust for rupees

Even though Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff are now the richest cricketers in the world it is still just possible they have an inkling there is more than one way of measuring wealth.

Maybe, also, that one of them is the ability to stand before the mirror and quite like what you see.

This level of reflection would not automatically redeem one of the lowest points in the history of the English game.

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But it might just offer a hint that these lavishly gifted and riotously rewarded professional sportsmen may be a little nearer the point of recognising that a great player's most glittering prize, once he has established that even in these difficult times he need never want for a penny for the rest of his life, will never be the size of his bank account but the knowledge that he consistently gave the best of himself when he was most seriously tested.

It is a satisfaction, the record shows, neither Pietersen nor Flintoff, despite bursts of individual brilliance evident even in this latest and shocking England debacle, has enjoyed since the apex of their careers in the Ashes series of 2005 – and must now, seem like a hundred years ago even as they contemplate their Twenty20 pyjama game auction value of £1.1m.

Yes, we need to be careful not to heap all the recriminations after the weekend of surrender in Sabina Park on the most lauded and rewarded of the participants.

The seeds of the disaster were planted some time ago; precisely, some might say, when the triumphal Ashes parade through London and 10 Downing Street descended into apparently untreatable hubris and an inevitable collapse in Australia.

Ambushes happen in cricket, like any other sport, and it is also true that if Pietersen and Flintoff are inevitably targeted because of their million-pound-plus windfalls in the Indian Premier League that will claim their services – outrageously when you think about it in the current context – to within a few days of the start of the home series against the West Indians in a few months' time, the failure in Kingston could scarcely have been more widespread.

No, the indictment does not solely concern the ignominious slide into massively unmitigated defeat a few days after Pietersen, having established a tightening grip around the West Indian throats, so carelessly threw away his wicket.

It goes a lot wider than that. It embraces an individual and collective inability at every level of the administration and prosecution of English international cricket, to deal effectively with the responsibilities that came with that rare nation-warming Ashes triumph.

English cricket had an unexpected spurt of growth in that fabled summer which reached such a superb climax with Pietersen and Flintoff the unchallenged heroes at The Oval on an early autumn day suddenly bathed in sunshine.

Unfortunately, we can see so clearly now, English cricket didn't grow up. It didn't respond to the demand of winning captain Michael Vaughan that it must fight to stay honest – and seriously competitive. And that it should not believe that one summer of heightened achievement would necessarily shape a better future made of accumulating fight and integrity.

The late Bob Woolmer, a fine and knowing coach of Pakistan, said that it would be interesting to see how England carried their new status when they came to challenge his team on the subcontinent. It turned out to be as absorbing as a road crash viewed in slow motion.

In Jamaica the disaster simply ran at an accelerated pace as England capsized to a pitiful 51, largely at the hand of an impressively emerging seam bowler called Taylor. He was emboldened by English timidity and incompetence to the point where he shot out the off-stump of the supremely talented Pietersen with a delivery that would have been proudly claimed by his Caribbean predecessors from Malcolm Marshall and Michael Holding to Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh.

For anyone in Queen's Park, Port of Spain, 15 years ago when England were shot out for 46, it was as though the world had been standing still for so long.

West Indian cricket is supposed to be in its death throes, overwhelmed by shifts of culture and values and the disappearance of great men like those Herculean bowlers and batsman of the quality of Viv Richards and Brian Lara.

Yet now, under the quirky but ultimately cool leadership of a batsman like Chris Gayle, who has shown he knows the importance of building an advantage, we see a cricketing Lazarus.

When you compare his lot to that of Andrew Strauss, inheritor of a situation that made a mockery of team organisation and any understanding of individual duty to a wider cause, it is enough, surely, to make English cricket lovers groan with a mixture of bitterness and disbelief.

Why? Because if their West Indian counterparts are seeing the miracle of renewal, new gusts of hope, and pride, what do English supporters see? It is something no less depressing than the entrenchment of decay and its agent complacency and – why avoid the reality? – greed.

They see the eager embrace of the rupee by men who hardly weeks ago were agonising over whether they could dare set foot again in a country beset by the kind of terrorism that struck fatally in England and then threatened again seriously in the summer that saw the Australians forced to surrender the Ashes.

They recall the vulgar enthusiasm at Lord's when the Texas billionaire Sir Allen Stanford landed with his chest filled with dollars.

Then they set that image against the chaos that came when Pietersen stamped his feet after being separated from the idea that a captain could pick his cronies and his coaches, and, naturally, feared the worst in the West Indies.

Now it has come to pass so grimly they might reflect that the one man, MCC member Lord Marland, who cared sufficiently to challenge the leadership of the English Cricket Board by its chairman Giles Clarke was denied even the courtesy of a hearing by a third of the county committees.

Understandably enough, he counted up his chances and then withdrew.

He concluded that the men who appointed the administrators of English cricket were pleased enough with the state of their game.

In Sabina Park we saw the stomach-turning consequence.

England collapses: Lowest Test scores

*45 v Australia, Sydney 1887

*46 v West Indies, P of Spain 1994

*51 v West Indies, Kingston 2009

*52 v Australia, The Oval 1948

*53 v Australia, Lord's 1888

*61 v Australia, Melbourne 1904 and v Australia, Melbourne 1902

*62 v Australia, Lord's 1888

*64 v New Zealand, Wellington 1978

*65 v Australia, Sydney 1895