A SMALL milestone went unrecorded when England played in Indore last week: it was 18 months to the day since Peter Moores’s first match as national coach.

First, he deserves sympathy - such is the nonstop nature of international cricket that today’s ODI in Bangalore will be his 65th fixture - but as Kevin Pietersen’s captaincy is already attracting revisionism, perhaps it is time to assess the other man at the helm. Evaluating a coach can be difficult but the balance sheet rarely lies. If England lose today, defeats would equal wins at 27-27. That would confirm their mid-table anonymity under Moores, despite a kind schedule. England have faced Australia in just one Twenty20 match (they lost). Fifteen victories have come against New Zealand, West Indies and Zimbabwe, and last summer’s late successes against South Africa were facile because the opposition took their foot off the gas after winning the Test series. The main feathers in the coach’s cap are one-day series wins over Sri Lanka away and India at home.

His immediate task in India was made more difficult by the news yesterday that Ryan Sidebottom has been ruled out of the ODI series after a scan on his strained side. His replacement is likely to come from the performance squad already in India, with Sajid Mahmood, a hit-the-deck bowler, the logical choice.

Moores’s relationship with the media was shaped by a desire not to be the man who went before him. Duncan Fletcher had been taciturn and mistrustful of the media, so Moores set himself to be nonconfrontational and upbeat. The strategy has worked. So far he has been given a gentle ride.

Moores has already lost the two captains he started with – Michael Vaughan in Tests and Paul Collingwood in the one-day stuff. He was unable to prevent the job getting too much for either. Noticeably, Vaughan, Collingwood and Pietersen (who now leads the team in all formats) have never warmly endorsed Moores in public. Vaughan didn’t even mention him in his resignation speech. Pietersen and Moores were known to be at odds before they started work together.

There is anecdotal evidence, too, of Moores ruffling the players’ feathers. Last month Pietersen let slip that one reason England had not performed well in Sri Lanka and New Zealand was that they had spent too much time on fitness work. “We all accept it wasn’t right,” he said. Fitness schedules are the coach’s responsibility. Last summer, a senior player said he preferred Fletcher’s less intrusive approach to his successor’s “in your face” style.

Moores deserves credit for the emergence of Sidebottom, but this is offset by some selectorial minuses for which he must share responsibility. These include the flawed parties for the world Twenty20 and the Stanford Challenge; the chopping and changing of wicketkeepers; the selection of Darren Pattinson; the handling of Monty Panesar; and the curious disappearance of Dimitri Mascarenhas.

That the players were uneasy going into the $20m Stanford match is surely Moores’s fault. He says it is the coach’s job “to create an environment for the players to perform”. Yet he did not do that in Antigua.

Things have hardly improved in India. The decisions not to select balanced attacks for the conditions in Rajkot and Indore were left looking bizarre by Graeme Swann’s solid performance in Kanpur.

With the white ball more likely to swing under the floodlights today, England can halt their run of ODI failures.