PETER MOORES has wasted no time in reshuffling England’s coaching staff. We are only halfway into the first series of the summer and Allan Donald has already been hired on probation as bowling coach.

At his peak Donald was blisteringly quick. His career record of 330 wickets at 22.25 in 72 Tests tells you all you need to know. He was in the thick of it at the start of Duncan Fletcher’s reign when, at the start of the Wanderers stadium Test in 1999, the new England coach was forced to watch as South Africa took the first four England wickets for two runs. “A D” had three of them. If he can coach that sort of thing his salary, whatever it is, will be well worth it.

He had oodles of natural talent, with a smooth, rhythmical run-up and an equally smooth, yet energetic, action. He was a joy to watch, preferably from a safe distance, and a challenge to face, the one piece of good news being that his action was such that one could at least see the hand and the delivery clearly, giving a good sight of the ball. After that, it was down to the speed of the batsman’s reactions.

However, he also liked a lot of attention and was one of those bowlers who needed constant monitoring of every component of his action. It seemed that he found the perfect partner for all that in the late Bob Woolmer, who took equal delight in watching over Donald’s every move, whether at Edgbaston for Warwickshire or at Newlands for South Africa.

Now, it is no secret that despite my one Test wicket - Kapil Dev, if you must ask - bowling was and is not one of my strong points, so anything I say in the next few paragraphs needs to be tempered by my lack of personal experience.

There are many aspects of a bowling action that one can tinker with. The side-on/front-on debate continues, with the latter currently in vogue with coaches as a means of preventing injury. Wrist and finger positions attract a lot of attention, as one can tell the moment Liam Plunkett delivers one off line; just check him out all the way back to his mark, and when he turns for the next ball you will see a man concerned entirely with the position of his wrist behind the ball. Indeed, one of A D’s main tasks will be to help Plunkett groove his action to the degree that it becomes self-repeating and instinctive, thus freeing him up to consider the batsman rather than his wrist position. The pace and angle of run-ups are just two more things to add to a list that no doubt goes down the page much further still.

I have heard that Donald and Woolmer agreed on an optimum speed of run-up over a similarly optimum distance, so that at the start of a day one could see Bob and A D with a tape measure marking out his run-up, and the former with a stopwatch timing the bowler, chiding him were he too fast or too slow.

Donald has heaps of experience, and his appointment appears to be a shrewd one. He should certainly have no difficulty in presenting his credentials to Steve Harmison, Plunkett et al, and they should find it easy enough to respond. The probationary status of the appointment is a sensible precaution while Moores and his charges see how they get on with him. So Kevin Shine, the man with the impressive list of coaching qualifications, slips into the background; apparently, he prefers to operate from the academy at Loughborough.

The slump in the bowling department since Troy Cooley’s departure should not be blamed on Shine. Whether or not he managed to form an empathy with Harmison and company in the same way as his predecessor is a moot point now, and it might be that he is better suited to working with players slightly lower down the scale.

It would have been a testing time for Cooley or anybody else in the aftermath of the 2005 Ashes. The bowling department has suffered an inordinate number of injuries since then, and that has been the single biggest problem for England. The team as a whole has lost focus during the past two years and it is only now, with some easy prey in its sights and a new regime in its early days, that things seem to be headed in the right direction again.

Donald could well be the man to get the bowlers back on track. I hope it works out for him and for the team and that he will be around for some time.