As defeats go, England’s humbling by West Indies in the Twenty20 match in Trinidad on Sunday was just one more black mark on a one-day landscape that, for nearly two decades, has looked dark indeed. It was merely a pipe-opener for the one-day series that begins tomorrow, but if the discrepancy between the spark and imagination shown by both teams extends to the 50-over game, the series could be done and dusted before a bumper crowd gathers for the fourth match of the series in Barbados a week on Sunday.

Since their defeat in the 1992 World Cup final — the Champions Trophy in 2004 notwithstanding — England’s performances in ICC one-day events, and increasingly in bilateral one-day series, have been woeful. The World Cups of 1996, 1999, 2003 and 2007 brought early exits; in the Champions Trophy England have reached the semi-final stage only once and in the inaugural World Twenty20 they suffered three defeats in three matches at the Super Eight stage.

Even England’s home form in one-day internationals, a shaft of light in the dim decade that was the 1990s, has disintegrated. Since the turn of the millennium England have lost more games at home than they have won in one-day cricket — even with the odd “gimme” series against Bangladesh thrown in — whereas in the decade before they won 62.5 per cent of one-day matches played.

Such a dismal record overall reflects ill on those captains (mea culpa, mea culpa) and coaches who have been in charge of strategy. Certainly, there were times, and the most recent World Cup was one, when you wondered how the decision-makers could become so blinkered to the world around them. When Michael Vaughan issued a “back to basics” rallying cry for the Caribbean in 2007, what he was really implementing was a plan that might have been successful 20 years earlier, long before the advent of powerplays and fielding restrictions. And when Andrew Strauss, in reply to the question of why England were not hitting as many boundaries as other teams, replied that “two threes are as good as a six”, the idiocy of the approach was laid bare.

But, clearly, in the 17 years that have passed since Pakistan beat Graham Gooch’s team in the World Cup final in Melbourne, not all of England’s captains and coaches have been clowns. Vaughan and Nasser Hussain would rank among the finest England captains and Duncan Fletcher, who was in charge for two dismal World Cups, the finest professional coach that England have had. The problem, then, goes deeper than mere personnel.

For a while, it could be argued — and Fletcher was a constant proponent of this — that England did not play as many one-day internationals as other teams and that itself was part of a wider problem, namely that England, stuffy as we are, looked down our noses at one-day cricket in relation to the Test format. Captains were selected on Test form only, regardless of their suitability for the shorter version of the game; for a long time an English summer consisted of only three Texaco Trophy games, touring squads were picked with Test matches in mind only and all players bar Darren Gough preached the sermon of Test cricket’s rectitude and almost moral authority. Only “The Dazzler” saw fit to retire from Test cricket before one-day internationals.

But that argument no longer holds true. England now play as many one-day internationals as everybody else, especially at home. Next year the international summer lingers long, with seven one-day internationals completing an overstuffed calendar. Kevin Pietersen was appointed captain expressly because, according to Geoff Miller, the national selector, one man was needed for all cricket, the implication being that one-day form counted for as much as Test form.

And now feast your eyes on the number of players in the Caribbean — one-day specialists flown in at great expense from New Zealand and elsewhere to give the team the best chance of being competitive. No, a lack of success can no longer be blamed on a lack of interest or that classic excuse, a lack of experience.

Two things continue to hold back England’s one-day cricket, one that can be sorted out with enough will and one that cannot. Dodgy weather is a hindrance, producing pitches that favour honest trundlers and batsmen wary of hitting through the line of the ball, both a rare breed in winning international teams. But New Zealand have a similar problem and when Strauss did service for Northern Districts two winters ago he proclaimed the standard of New Zealand’s domestic one-day cricket to be far superior to England’s.

In particular, he said, the levels of fitness, athleticism, planning and power-hitting were way more advanced. Given that New Zealand domestic cricket is regarded as among the weakest around and given also the relative lack of resources compared with England, Strauss’s comments represented nothing less than an indictment of the domestic one-day set-up of English cricket.

But on we go this year, with a calendar designed not to produce decent cricket or decent cricketers but to milk as much money as it can, with three one-day tournaments, 50, 40 and 20-over, crammed into an overcrowded fixture list. Fifty-over cricket is squeezed into the start of the season, 40-over cricket at the end, with Twenty20 cricket in the middle, so that the main 50-over tournament is all but done for the majority of professional players before summer has really begun.

To take a county at random, say Somerset. If they fail to reach the quarter-finals of the Friends Provident Trophy they will not play another 50-over match after May 20. The last four of their eight group games are concertinaed into the seven days before that: they play Warwickshire at Taunton on May 14, Kent at Canterbury on the 16th and Middlesex at Lord’s on the 17th, before nipping up to Edinburgh to play Scotland on the 20th. Not much time for planning, rest and practice between that lot; no wonder Justin Langer recently professed amazement that there were not more fatalities on the roads.

Half of Somerset’s Pro40 fixtures (40-over) are played after September 8, when, as at the start of the season, conditions are rarely conducive to the type of cricket that would best prepare players for international one-day cricket. With the scrapping of the Pro40 after this summer, and the financial crisis scaring off investors for the English Premier League, next year represents the best opportunity in an age to restructure English domestic one-day cricket.

The obvious response to losing in both forms of one-day international cricket is to juggle the pack to try to find the right mix. In 15 Twenty20 internationals England have tried 11 opening partnerships and have used 40 players, seven of whom have played only one match. But this is based on the flawed belief that those being given their opportunity have been well primed in domestic cricket, which is clearly not the case.

Consistent success in one-day cricket will not come England’s way until an overcrowded and ill-conceived fixture list is overhauled to give county players the best chance of playing the type of one-day cricket that better mirrors what they will encounter at the next level up. Everyone in cricket knows this to be true, but is there the will to put quality before quantity, to put England’s best interests before county balance sheets? Sport as a whore: now where have I heard that before?