England at the crossroads with a divided dressing room and coach under fire Whatever has been done or said in the dressing room Pietersen, having risen to the occasion in India, has sunk to it in Australia and thereby supplied ammunition to his many critics. However, if Jonathan Trott does not return, and Pietersen is dropped, England are left with only two senior batsmen - Cook, who will under-perform with the bat so long as he remains captain if modern precedent is any guide, and Ian Bell - and with a line-up of inexperienced batsmen they may not defeat Sri Lanka in the first Test series of this summer, let alone India in the second. Undiplomatic, insecure, egotistical, a showpony but not Machiavelli: KP or not KP? That is the question. Appointing Pietersen as vice-captain, as Michael Vaughan has suggested, could be a make-or-break move. 2) Can Paul Downton make the tough decisions? The person who ultimately has to answer it is outwardly unremarkable, even diffident. Without noticing him for 20 years you might have caught the same 05.59 from his native Kent into the City as Paul Downton. He starts as the England and Wales Cricket Board's new managing director on Feb 2, but is already on gardening leave in Australia - and preparing to grasp this nettle which dominates the garden. Under the surface, Downton is tough and unflinching, as wicketkeepers have to be. When he was chosen out of the blue for his first England tour, as a 20-year-old studying law at Exeter University, he could easily have been overwhelmed by old pros like Geoffrey Boycott. In one of his few games on that first tour of Pakistan in 1977-78, he had a nightmare, conceding valuable byes when the pace bowlers fired down the legside and the ball bounced and bobbled on a rough field before reaching him. But he survived. Perhaps the best measure of his toughness is that more than half of his 30 Tests were against West Indies, when they were the world champions in the 1980s. For 16 Tests Downton kept his place, and his head, against the best pace attack the world has seen - and he was often promoted from No 7 when a specialist batsman had an arm broken or a head injury. It was a tough dressing room, too, featuring Ian Botham, Allan Lamb, David Gower, Peter Willey, Graham Gooch: a wider range of strong characters than Andy Flower has to deal with now. Emollient, or rather non-confrontational, but strong enough to keep going doggedly until he gets what he wants: if any mediator is going to bring Flower, Pietersen and Cook together, it is going to be someone who has been there, done that, and is now older and wiser. Downton did not leave cricket voluntarily and lose interest: he only retired from playing because he was hit in the eye by a ball while keeping wicket, and then he kept his hand in by serving on committees. To this day his vision is slightly blurred, but only in the literal sense. When Andrew Strauss and Angus Fraser turned down the ECB's approaches to succeed Hugh Morris as managing director, they knew someone who could do the job. 3) New personnel or new methods? Everyone, including Flower, is agreed that something has to change: either the personnel or the methods they are using. World-class coaches are in such short supply the number of alternatives to Flower as head coach is smaller than a handful. In a few years, after he has done his best for Australia, Darren Lehmann would be worth considering: he has extensive knowledge of English cricket after playing for Yorkshire, and is married to the sister of the former England player, Craig White. An extremely aggressive, and entertaining, brand of cricket might be what England need should they lose the 2015 Ashes. For the moment, with Lehmann contracted to Australia until 2015, Gary Kirsten is the only proven world-class alternative: there could be no going back for Duncan Fletcher, once England's coach and now India's. Quietly and cleverly, Kirsten first led India to No 1 in the Test rankings and to the 2011 World Cup, then South Africa to No 1, before deciding to devote more time to his family. He comes from the same angle as Flower: a very successful Test batsman who, as a left-hander confronted by unusual angles, had to learn for himself how to problem-solve. But Kirsten does not have the knowledge of English cricket that Flower has, never having played for a county, and would have to go backwards before he goes forwards. Alternatively, Ashley Giles could be promoted from England's limited-overs coach to head coach. But he has only been in the job for one year and has yet to achieve success in 20- or 50-over international cricket, so it would be an enormous leap to give him the Test portfolio, too. And sooner or later the job of coaching England year-round in all three formats would become impossible for him or anyone else. Giles, moreover, has a wife whose medical condition needs careful monitoring, so he could be called away at any time. The pragmatic solution is for Flower to continue - with new methods. A lighter tone at times has been mentioned, and Flower will no doubt review that criticism in his constant quest for improvement, one of the chief qualities required of a coach. England's visit to the SAS in Staffordshire did not bond and buoy the team before leaving but was more of a lead balloon as the players wanted a weekend with their families before setting off in late October. Calculating the right amount of change will be the key decision for Downton to make. Change for change's sake, or rather for the sake of being seen by the media and public to do something, was proved to be self-defeating when England selected three debutants for the fifth Test in Sydney to no effect. England have failed to reach 400 in their first innings for almost a year, so if one change is made in personnel, the batting coach may be most vulnerable: Downton's old team-mate, Gooch. 4) How can cricket's reach be expanded? Another part of Downton's brief may seem to be low priority but it could prove the most important long-term. Women's cricket is limited to an even more middle-class niche than the men's game in England, and has to expand simply to keep pace with other countries and their rapidly growing constituencies. In addition, it could be the key to mass participation and saving cricket from being the sport of middle-class, middle-aged men and boys who have gone to fee-paying schools - a minority in the England team a decade ago, but now the majority. A window exists for diversifying the social base but it will not be open for much longer. Cricket is still the No 1 sport of two million British Asians. Whether they support England, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or even Afghanistan, they watch the IPL on television, and are not interested in football. But when a British Asian Premier League football star comes along, how long will they retain an interest in cricket if their sons and daughters do not play - for want of grounds and encouragement in our inner cities? The African-Caribbean community has switched from cricket to football in a generation. If the British Asian community goes the same way, cricket could become a niche sport. Another nettle to be grasped. 5) How can players" workload be better managed? Of the 18 recommendations contained in the Schofield Report of 2007, the ECB enacted 16. But it can be argued that the two recommendations they failed to enact were the most important - to reduce the amount of international cricket England play, and of domestic cricket that the counties play, in order to raise standards. "The present England International and First Class Counties" competitive programmes are congested and prevent peak performance. It appears impossible to implement the Prepare-Play-Recover & Analyse system favoured by the great majority of the coaches and players interviewed as part of this Review. It consequently places England at a disadvantage," the report concluded. Having played against Australia for three months in the summer of 2013, England's players had one month before setting off to play them in Australia, where home advantage has always been significant - and in that month the players were unable to play other, lesser opponents to work on their games and mentally refresh. In the end, the current system is inoperable. Given the quantity of international cricket that England have to play, and the quantity that county cricketers have to play, sustained excellence is impossible, certainly in all three formats. Good men have bucked the system temporarily - firstly Fletcher with Nasser Hussain and Vaughan, then Flower with Strauss and Cook - but it cannot be beaten until those two most important recommendations have been enacted. England's cricketers were not at their best and freshest when they went to Australia for their biggest assignment. County cricketers are not at their freshest and best when they play a limited-overs match the day after a four-day championship game. The intense aggression with which Australia overwhelmed England is never seen in county cricket. "The itinerary for both International and Domestic cricket must allow for the highest standards of play and entertainment," as the Schofield Review suggested. Instead, we have been sold the pup of "rotation," which means resting players and lowering standards while maximising revenue. Just as no man can serve two gods, the ECB cannot have the maximisation of revenue and world-class excellence as twin objectives. Something had to give - and it has.