How Andrew Strauss and a bit of fun can inspire England's Test revival

Cricket used to be a top down game in which everything flowed from the captain. These days the leader is just one cog in a byzantine hierarchy as Joe Root is discovering in the vacuum around him – a space that needs urgently to be filled with a new coach, team director, chairman, and possibly a new captain should Root not pass muster with at least two of those appointments.

It is an extravagance of vacancies that calls to mind Oscar Wilde’s observations about losing parents: that one is misfortune but two looks like carelessness. There could be more, too, if ECB chief executive Tom Harrison decides he’s had enough, following a trying two years hit by Covid and criticism of The Hundred. Even so, English cricket seems particularly chaotic and must start untangling the mess with the appointment of a new chairman forthwith.

It is a role that must straddle a certain divide. Twenty years ago, when TV money first began to pour into the game (it had been a trickle previously), cricket was criticised for being run largely by former players with no business acumen. Now, with hundreds of millions of pounds going through the books (at least at the ECB), the charge is that nobody involved understands the cricket side of things any more or has the game’s interest at heart.

Both are valid criticisms and one I’d counter by appointing Andrew Strauss as ECB chairman, his credentials as a former captain with a degree in economics being impeccable.

Of course Strauss is currently interim team director, a post he once filled full time but no longer wants due to a change in family circumstances following the death of his wife. Being ECB chairman would not require the same hours as his previous job so he could be swayed. Also, while he appears