There is no middle way for a captain: you either smell as sweet as a Ruud Gullit pass or as foul as a Vinny Jones tackle

ON SATURDAY

As Michael Atherton completes a week in which England's cricketing decline has reached such depths the entire squad should be fitted with an aqualung, he can take comfort from one thing: he's not Richie Richardson. After Thursday's defeat against Kenya, Richardson has achieved the unlikely feat of making Graham Taylor look like a wanted man.

"People in the Caribbean have become immune to disappointment, but this must go down as the worst-ever performance," Michael Holding said after the West Indies showed all the spinal consistency of a caterpillar as they crumbled to the East African part-timers. "I don't know if Richie will go now, but something will have to be done."

Apart from Holding's idiosyncratic analysis of the length of West Indian disappointment (being the best team in the world for 20 years must get to you after a while), what was interesting about his comments was the suggestion that dropping the pilot is what is required to put the ship back on course.

Indeed as Maurice Odumbe, Kenya's skipper, after apparently single-handedly driving his team to victory, savours the prospect of sainthood back home ("they should declare a national holiday in Kenya," he said after his match-winning efforts, "not today, but on my birthday"), this week has provided conclusive evidence that there is no middle way for a captain: you either smell as sweet as a Ruud Gullit pass, or as foul as a Vinny Jones tackle.

Memory, inevitably, plays no part in this. The World Cup has progressed with a growing sound-track of trumpeting headlines suggesting that Atherton - terse, hang-dog, cool - should be replaced by Dermot Reeve - chipper, spontaneous, passionate - so that even if England lost, they would have the good grace to do so in a sweaty shirt. This campaign has generally been orchestrated by the same voices which recently demanded Atherton's deification after his match-saving efforts against South Africa. Meanwhile Will Carling, a man reckoned to be so sharp on the principles of leadership he has made a handy living selling his ideas to big business, is judged by many shrewd observers to be past his inspire-by date. Dean Richards's return, for instance, has been widely hailed as the only chance England have of winning today: at last the team will have someone to inspire them.

In a sense Carling and Atherton, their manner cerebral rather than gung- ho, are of a kind. According to Brian Moore, Carling's almost preternatural calm in his team-talks was as liable to enrage as it was to quell nerves. During one international, Moore recalls, with England trailing and only a few minutes left, Carling gathered the team together as the opposition took yet another penalty and told them not to panic: there was plenty of time left. One of the forwards, prone to adopting the Corporal Jones approach to crisis, sought to disagree with his skipper: "We're effing losing 14 effing 8 and this effer tells us not to effing panic" was the gist of his argument. In the event, Moore is happy to accept, England won and Carling was right.

The problem is, that crisis was temporary. It seems from their two teams' recent performances that the Carling/Atherton way of captaincy has little effect if the decline is more significant (pull your sleeves up and dig for victory appear not to be words in their vocabulary). Particularly if, as they have, you have imposed above you a layer of management which is clearly not up to the job. Even Dermot Reeve's particular brand of up-and-at-'em leadership skills would be tested in a dressing-room where morale has been damaged irreparably by Ray Illingworth's treatment of Devon Malcolm and Mark Ramprakash, interjections straight from the Cedric Brown school of man-management. Neither has Carling appeared to thrive under the direction of Jack Rowell, whose idea of team selection is to drop the best performer.

To suggest either manager is entirely responsible for their country's dip in form is to over-simplify: but we all know that organisations stink from the head down. There is not much someone half-way down the operation (where Carling and Atherton now find themselves) can do to lift those intangible things - morale and goodwill - that keep a creative enterprise afloat if their leaders show such disloyalty to your colleagues. If Atherton and Carling were free to make decisions that matter, instead of being saddled with cack-handed management, their present predicament would be less threatening.

In the meantime, they can but reflect on the celebratory plaudits that can come a leader's way if he gets it right. How does that version of "Wonderwall" sung by Manchester City fans go again? "And Franny, you could have had Richard Madeley/ But after all, you got Alan Ball."