Video: Pietersen resigns | Video: Pietersen's press conference

Strauss asked to pick up the pieces | England's flawed genius | Atherton: Strauss must heal England's rifts | CMJ: England's captain-coach relationship vital | Pietersen: gamble that failed when going got tough | Atherton: Ashes now depends on Pietersen's reaction | County executives back Moores to return | Pietersen is oblivious as cricket world collapses around him

Not since Douglas Jardine in 1933 has an England captain enjoyed, however briefly, the sort of independence and authority that Kevin Pietersen demanded if he was to continue in the role. Good teams need strong captains and strong captains need genuine control, but, even given the additional pressures imposed on him by the terrorist murders in Mumbai, the fearless “KP” pushed his luck too far.

At the risk of contradicting my suggestion in yesterday's Times that Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket, should have ordered Pietersen and Peter Moores to sort out their relationship, there was no point in continuing a partnership of incompatibles.

Ashes bid in chaos as big gamble fails

Six months before the start of the critical series, and the England team has lost both its captain and its coach, says Michael Atherton

• Like Buster Keaton, Kevin Pietersen is oblivious as cricket world collapses around him

• Kevin Pietersen: celebrity player is god who moves in a mysterious way

• ECB member clears Kevin Pietersen of going public over coaching row

BACKGROUND

• Strauss offers a safe pair of hands

• County chiefs tip Moores to return

• Pietersen and Moores disunited

Multimedia

• Video: Pietersen returns to England

• Video: Pietersen's press conference

Captain-coach relationship is vital

The incompatibility that led to yesterday's dramatic events has echoes throughout the history of the game

• Kevin Pietersen: celebrity player is god who moves in a mysterious way

• Like Buster Keaton, Kevin Pietersen is oblivious as cricket world collapses around him

BACKGROUND

• Ford puts his name in the frame

• Pietersen and Moores need to eat humble pie

• The rise and fall of Peter Moores

Times Archive, 1974: Boycott walks out

To an uncommon degree, Boycott is a man driven by personal ambition. This being so he finds it more difficult than most to accept a subordinate position

• Times Archive: Sport

Related Links

• Pietersen: a player who moves in mysterious ways

• KP oblivious as chaos surrounds him

In no other game is a captain half so important as he is in cricket. At international level the job becomes a tremendous responsibility, the more so since former incumbents in many countries have moved from dressing-room to television commentary box, there to examine with critical and sometimes forgetful eyes every tactical and strategic move made by the man in the hot seat. But well before the television close-up, the captaincy of England was always a matter of debate.

In the early days it was all a little ad hoc, the leadership decided as much as anything by who was available to play where and when. A man such as A. C. MacLaren, of Lancashire, successor to W. G. Grace in 1899, would have considerable power for a chosen match or tour, but without any expectation that his role would be even semi-permanent.

There have been plenty of firm England leaders since Jardine, who pushed his “leg-theory” attack in Australia against the wishes of his manager, Pelham Warner, and his amateur fast bowler, Gubby Allen, but all were subject to the checks and balances of the English system. The key to an effective leadership, indeed, especially on tours, has often lain in the relationship between the captain and the other front man, whoever he may be. Once he was a manager such as Warner, now he is a coach such as Moores.

Tony Greig, the last South African officially appointed to captain England (Allan Lamb did so only as a stand-in and I count the freshly appointed Andrew Strauss, child though he is of South African parents, as English by upbringing and attitude), was fortunate to have the affable but also worldly-wise Ken Barrington at his side in India in 1976-77. Mike Brearley (and Bob Willis after him) enjoyed a notably warm relationship with the strong, silent, loyal Doug Insole, and so on.

But when things went wrong in the chemistry between captain and manager, it always ended in tears. Peter May clashed horribly with the garrulous Walter Robins in the West Indies and Ray Illingworth, fiercely independent, fell out completely with his genial but, in the circumstances, badly chosen manager, David Clark, in 1970-71. If Illingworth and Clark were chalk and cheese, Mike Atherton and Illingworth were granite and granite, no better a mix. But, even when his side were being heavily outgunned in the West Indies, Atherton was content in the company of the adaptable M. J. K. Smith.

In 1962 there was a summer-long debate about who would take the side to Australia. Not even what might have been called the Establishment (the same Gubby Allen was in charge) could decide between two candidates from Cambridge, Ted Dexter and the Rev David Sheppard, and Colin Cowdrey, the Oxonian who had stood in competently for May. Dexter was chosen but all three had their advocates and each would have done the job well. Whether Sheppard would have gelled quite so well as Dexter did with the manager, the Duke of Norfolk no less, is perhaps another matter.

Somehow they do these things better in Australia, and indeed in India and South Africa, the countries at the top of the world game. None of Ricky Ponting, Mahendra Singh Dhoni or Graeme Smith needs worry about an occasional defeat.

Everyone knows that each of them is the right man for the job. They do it worse, too, mind you, in some countries. In Pakistan the captaincy is a lottery, passed from one player to another on the whim of some portentous military man. Sri Lanka's leaders, too, are at the mercy of politicians who should be playing no part. We should be thankful at least that this is one problem that will not end up on the PM's desk at No 10.