Paul Downton sacked: Wisden weighs in with its own verdict on his ECB reign

Alastair Cook’s sacking as England one-day captain ‘was the correct decision but too late’ (Getty Images)

Paul Downton’s demise came on the same day as he, and the English game’s hierarchy, came in for unprecedented criticism in the latest edition of the sport’s bible, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.

The editor, Lawrence Booth, lists a catalogue of failings by the England and Wales Cricket Board. There has been a fall in participation: 10 years after the 2005 Ashes were a national obsession, “cricket is loitering at the edges of the conversation”, says Booth.

He points out that England lost nine full series out of 11 across the formats last year, and adds: “In 2014 English cricket repeatedly lost touch with the basic idea that the national team belongs to us all.”

After England’s Ashes whitewash in 2013-14, “the power brokers indulged in mutual backslapping. National selector James Whitaker had called Cook ‘our exceptional leader’; Paul Downton, the ECB’s new managing director, hailed Peter Moores as the ‘outstanding coach of his generation’; chairman Giles Clarke trumpeted Downton as a ‘man of great judgment’. It was a nexus of self-preservation – yet, as the wagons circled, the wheels kept threatening to come off.”

Booth says Alastair Cook’s sacking as one-day captain was “the correct decision, but several months too late”. And as for the ECB’s handling of the Kevin Pietersen affair, Booth adds: “Their comments on the fallout with Pietersen should have been clear and concise.

“Instead, England botched the PR battle. They hinted that some darker truth about his behaviour would emerge once a confidentiality agreement expired in October. Yet the lull merely prolonged the fiasco. And, when the dirt failed to materialise, the ECB looked rudderless.”