Batting on the brink

Form is a fickle thing in cricket. There might be no reason for it coming and going, yet that's what it does. That effort to find form again might feel like the longest wait in the world, but sometimes all it can take is one good innings, or a couple of lucky wickets. In form, and it feels like everything will just go right; out of form, and everything just goes wrong.

And there can come a point where a player reaches the brink. The last chance when their place in the side, even their career, is on the line. It's the brink where Nick Compton finds himself now. Trevor Bayliss has said he prefers to give players one test too many rather than one test too few; others say he's already been given his test too many. Certainly it looks like his moment of judgement has arrived, after gradually diminishing returns in South Africa and then a poor start to the English summer on both domestic and international fronts. With England's batting lineup still not finding its stride, there's always going to be one man looking like the obvious fall guy, and right now Compton is the next in line.

It can be a defining moment, that last match whilst the axe is sharpened in the background. Think Andrew Strauss - 2008 against New Zealand. A duck in the first innings and his head ready for the chop. 177 in the second innings, a career saved, and the next year he was England's captain. Paul Collingwood against South Africa the same year, coming back fighting in the second innings with 135 at a moment when his career was on the line. Alastair Cook at the end of the summer of 2010, a moment when he might have been on the brink of being dropped ahead of that winter's Ashes series, making 110 in the second innings against Pakistan. We all know what happened after that. Though still young enough to make a comeback, the story still might have been so different.

But the do-or-die moment doesn't work out so well for everybody. For every Cook or Strauss there are many more who can't avoid the chop. Think of all the openers England have gone through in the past few years, and many other batsmen too. Think of Ian Bell, a man with the history and the reputation, but who couldn't turn around his form when that time came. Sometimes the rut is too deep to claw a way out of.

That moment is now for Compton. His place in the side has never been cemented - and it would take more than just runs in the next test at Lord's to stake a claim for a long term future in the team. But fail here, and his international career would surely be at an end. Nearly 33, international chances don't often come round again, and certainly not for a fledgling career such as his.

Will he succeed? We will have to wait and see. And with Compton, it's not just the runs that matter; it's the manner in which they are made, too. It's a question that has followed him around since his first spell in the team - the balance between being cautious in approach and simply not scoring, which often swings too far towards the latter. There's certainly still a place for the grafting innings, but you still need to have that way of letting off the pressure, that release which Compton doesn't always seem to have. Cook and Trott, and Ballance too, though cautious in approach, still did enough to keep the scoreboard ticking, as strike rates in the upper forties show. Compton's strike rate of 35.88 leaves him trailing behind. Test cricket of course is not and should not just be about strike rates, but as everyone else runs ahead, Compton too often stands still.

How might his career have been different had England decided not to chop and change in the first place. After all the struggles England have had with their opening batsmen in the past three years (though Hales has impressed so far this summer), with hindsight it might have been best to keep the faith in the first man chosen as Strauss's replacement. Just like finding form, international sport can be fickle and cruel, and hindsight can give no comfort.

With the knives being sharpened, a game at his home ground of Lord's will give Compton his most important test yet. Here stands a man on the brink, his international career on the line. It's now or never.

Another fine mess

Oh, how the ECB love to outdo themselves. Not content with how badly the Kevin Pietersen saga has panned out over the past fifteen months, they went and made it even worse. And this happened in a week where the sacking of a coach was leaked to the media before the man himself was even told. It's the sort of thing that you can't make up - and yet at the same time it doesn't feel surprising. The ECB, with their exceptional talent for angering the fans, have managed to exceed even themselves.

So, Andrew Strauss was appointed as the new director of cricket, filling the spot recently vacated by Paul Downton. What Downton lacked, Strauss certainly had - that understanding of the modern game, the gravitas and respect that comes with playing 100 test matches and being a highly successful captain of the side. Was it a 'safe' option? Maybe. It any case it looked like another man appearing from the establishment, still with close relationships to several of the key ECB figures, staff, and players. Whilst I would call myself a fan of Strauss, as the man who led England to the top of the rankings and the Ashes wins in 2009 and 2010/11, I might have preferred someone a bit more detached from the whole set up. But that's not saying he won't do a good job, and I don't doubt that he can be the man to take England forward. Though he's already made a horrible start, helping a messier situation to become even messier.

First of all came the sacking of Peter Moores, a move perhaps suggesting Strauss may not quite be the company man first believed and a man not afraid to make the big decision. It's easy to see why he went, and I would say the right call was made - progress made in the test side last summer being masked by dismal ODI performances, the defeat in the final test against the West Indies putting the cherry on top of it all. He certainly has a talent for spotting players, something we've seen in both reigns as coach - bringing Swann and Sidebottom back from the wilderness to become key players in his first reign; giving Ballance the number three spot and bringing Buttler into the test team during his second stint. And yet there's always been this sense that he just doesn't connect with the public - all the coach speak and talk of the 'data' that comes back to haunt him, and the complaints of his coaching style seem often to resurface, even if not going as far as Pietersen's description of him as a 'human triple espresso'.

But whether or not you felt it was the right choice, the way it happened was another unedifying episode for the ECB - Moores coaching the team in Ireland whilst the press is telling the world he doesn't have a job. It's just disrespectful, a terrible way to treat someone, and this to a man just a year ago described as the 'outstanding coach of his generation'. Once again the ECB are left embarrassed - they made the decision to bring Moores back and a year later have sacked him again. The Pietersen drama in the background gave it all an eerie sense of deja vu.

Indeed, ultimately it comes back to Kevin Pietersen, as it always seems to do. The man is told to go back, score runs in the County Championship, and then he might be able to get back in contention. And he certainly did that in emphatic fashion - 355* for Surrey with a strike rate close to 90, playing like the Pietersen of old. Innings like that are what makes him such a special player - a player that people want to watch, a player that can turn matches around and strike fear into the opposition. Innings like his 158 at The Oval in 2005, like the 186 at Mumbai in 2012, like those centuries in South Africa that announced him on the world stage. Can you really blame anyone for wanting to see a player like that?

Well, it turns out that the ECB can. On the very same day, Pietersen's England career was all but ended once again. He's not explicitly 'banned', but told he won't at least be featuring this summer, so as good as. The ECB outdo themselves again. I just feel that, if they don't want to select him - then just don't select him, rather than making an announcement about it, holding a meeting to say so. He's a fan favourite, and by making this announcement the ECB are essentially sticking their middle finger up to a lot of them. Neither side has come off well in the whole saga over the past year or so, Pietersen's book certainly not doing his image any favours, but the ECB seemed determined to come off worst of all. They've shot themselves in the foot, except they've done it so many times now that there's barely any foot left to shoot.

The contradictions make it even worse. Strauss speaks of a 'massive trust issue' between the ECB and Pietersen, and then offers him an advisory role for the ODI team. Does that really make any sense? It's unsurprising, at least, that Pietersen declined the role. And lurking in the shadows remains 'textgate', the whole affair that saw relations between the two sour in 2012, something clearly still lingering when Strauss was caught on the microphone describing Pietersen as 'an absolute c***' just last year. How much of this 'trust issue' is a personal one? And is Strauss, indeed, not detached far enough from the current set up?

Regardless of whether or not Pietersen should be in the team, the way this whole thing has been managed - and that is going back to the sacking last year and beyond - has been a disgrace. Is a player ever really unmanageable, or is it just bad management? And even in choosing to move on without him, surely it could have been done so much better? Instead there's been a black cloud hovering around English cricket for over a year, not always at the forefront, but always lingering somewhere. It will only continue.