Time for a revamp after England T20 World Cup exit - Chris Waters

The theme across both sports is striking - of our cricketers and footballers not playing to their potential.

Would Gareth Southgate have done any worse in charge of the cricket, or Matthew Mott in charge of the football? Who knows.

It can only be hoped that Southgate and his men “come good”, as they say.

Failed campaigns at international competitions are invariably line-in-the-sand moments in this day and age.

England’s cricketers have had two of them now in the space of nine months, having bombed at the 50-over World Cup in India last year, a performance on which they improved in the Caribbean, but not to the extent that they can still be regarded as a great white-ball power.

The statistics, sadly, speak for themselves.

England played eight games at the T20 World Cup and won only one against a leading nation - West Indies.

Facile victories over Oman, Namibia and USA were merely to be expected.

Otherwise, England were comfortably beaten by Australia, lost narrowly to South Africa and were then annihilated by India in the semis.

A last-four spot was hardly a calamity, but England limped into those semis and then limped out again at the hands of a much better side.

On a slow, low pitch tailor-made for the spinners, India proved predictably superior and England, alas, predictably bereft.

As was the case at the 50-over World Cup, some of England’s tactics/selections seemed dubious at times. There was no real sense of a team getting better.

The knee jerk reaction is to say - get rid of the captain and the coach. They are the ones to blame. It’s obvious, and so on.

It is true that Jos Buttler and Mott are carrying the can - along with Rob Key, the director of cricket.

A personal view - and perhaps a controversial one - is that none of those gentlemen are justifying salaries.

Granted, Key appointed Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes and kick-started the ‘Bazball’ era, but Alicia Keys, with a little advice and perhaps a bit of research, could have done that.

Buttler strikes me as a curious fellow, difficult to get a proper handle on. He is a fantastic batsman and has given great service to his country, but he looks to be enjoying the captaincy about as much as someone who has mislaid his copy of The Yorkshire Post.

His press conferences have been tetchy to say the least - not quite in the territory of Steve Clark, the supercilious Scotland manager, but certainly prickly.

As I wrote here after the 50-over World Cup, I would have made David Willey the white-ball captain. Alternatives are thin on the ground now after his retirement, with Willey having felt unwanted and unloved by the management.

Everything goes in cycles, of course, and England do not have a divine right, as the saying goes.

At the same time, they are third in the T20 and Test rankings and sixth in the ODI rankings - not exactly a glowing advert for a country so well-stocked and suitably resourced.