PUT TWO doctors in the same room and you’ll get a breakdown in opinion. Put two doctors in a room with an England cricketer and you’ll get a statement from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) saying everything is fine, then the player breaks down.

To the casual observer, the story of English cricket since the Ashes triumph last September has been one of defeats punctuated by frequent gruesome medical bulletins. After the latest mishap to Michael Vaughan, which probably signals the end of his captaincy reign, if not his career, the forthcoming Ashes series looks like being a return to the ritual humiliation we thought the golden summer of 2005 had put an end to.

The only crumbs of comfort are that an Australian player might yet tear a rib muscle chortling at England’s misfortune and legions of Aussie punters are saddled with Ashes tickets they bought as an investment. Shame. All they can hope to do is sell now and cut their losses before the Poms have a chance to lie down and die in the Pakistan series.

English cricket is in crisis. If things continue on this path — losing an Ashes series, followed by another World Cup disaster — even as doughty a general as Duncan Fletcher might be persuaded to quit in despair.

The present situation is, above all, a crisis of management. A point that will strike the man in the street is that Vaughan, Ashley Giles, Simon Jones and Andrew Flintoff have been laid off with recurrences of, basically, the same injuries. This is despite the presence of a bigger medical backroom staff than ever.

It may be that the levels of fitness required to play international cricket these days are so high that injuries are easier to pick up and harder to shake off. But with the possible exception of New Zealand, the depth of England’s problem doesn’t seem to be mirrored by other teams.

Jones’s position is perhaps different from the other three. Because of a long history of injuries, he has never played much cricket, but the implementation of central contracts virtually removed the possibility of him strengthening his body through bowling work. Thus, the inevitable impact damage to his knees and ankles has taken a heavy toll. In a nutshell, England may have cosseted him not wisely, but too well. As for Vaughan, Giles and Flintoff, there is a case for saying all three should have been given firmer medical guidance. Instead, each has, to an extent, been allowed to make his own judgment on his state of fitness (would this have happened had they not been Ashes superstars?) and suffered the consequences.

Vaughan now concedes that he rushed himself back for the India tour after knee surgery. He was anxious to reassert his authority, reclaim his place and restore the team to winning ways. But he should never have been given the chance.

For his part, Giles admits that, so troublesome was his right hip during the Ashes, he was barely able to put his body weight through it by the end of the series. Yet still he declared himself available for the Pakistan tour, with predictable consequences. He broke down after two Tests and hasn’t bowled since.

Flintoff is even more a law unto himself, and, when put in charge, is liable to bowl more than is good for him. Like Vaughan and Giles, if he is given the choice, he’d rather play than not (although he must regret that spurious Supertest in Australia).

Apart from anything else, playing pays their wages, and in the winning climate that prevailed at the end of the Ashes, nobody wanted to give up his place.

But if the players have become too powerful, medical experts such as Dr Peter Gregory, the ECB’s chief medical officer, have been, arguably, too weak. He needs to assimilate the advice from various specialists and provide firm instruction. Where necessary, he must tell an injured player to take the long-term solution from the outset, then map out aggressive, imaginative courses of rehabilitation.