England Cricket / Ralph Ellis / 02 March 2010 /

With England having three different men in charge on the field over the next three months, Ralph Ellis expresses his confusion as to who is actually in charge of the England cricket team, not a good state of affairs with the upcoming T20 World Cup fast approaching.

You would really hope that the job of England cricket captain would be a bit more stable than being manager of Queen's Park Rangers. Just to explain, Neil Warnock starts work today as the 13th man in the Loftus Road hot seat in four years, including one spell when two joint managers sat in it at the same time. Already the main question is how long before he's collecting a nice retirement pay-off on his three year contract and they are looking for the 14th?

No, leading out England's chosen cricket XI shouldn't be like that at all. You're talking about a noble office going back to the days of WG Grace or CB Fry, handed on to the names like Hutton, Cowdrey, Illingworth, Brearley or Gatting. But times, it seems, are changing.

Just to bring you up to date with the story from the last few weeks, it began with Andrew Strauss handing over to Alastair Cook. Except he didn't, because first Paul Collingwood was in charge for two games in Dubai. But Cook has taken over now, although he'll hand it back again, but not to Strauss but to Collingwood for the World Twenty20 Cup. And it will be only at Lord's in May against Bangladesh - who England are playing in Test matches shortly - that Strauss can be England captain again. Confused? Me too. So quite what the players think I can't imagine.

The word from Bangladesh this morning seems to be that Cook isn't best pleased at being left out of the trip to the West Indies for the short form tournament. He'd half-jokingly suggested his name might be put back in the hat after his recent dazzling one-day displays. And there's yet more disruption to come, because Kevin Pietersen - another who has just been rediscovering his form - will be in the squad for the Caribbean but on standby to fly home when he becomes a dad.

His wife, former Liberty X singer Jessica Taylor, is due to give birth to their first child in May when the tournament begins and Pietersen will have permission for the seven hour flight home at a moment's notice.

Meanwhile the provisional 30-man squad named yesterday included a host of new names. Steven Finn, the 6ft 7ins fast bowler from Middlesex, is among a group of newcomers that also includes Somerset's Peter Trego, who at 29 is hardly one for the future. Michael Lumb of Hampshire, who is 30, is there too. Maybe that's just to make sure that if Pietersen does go home the quota of South African born players is maintained.

I was quite optimistic about our potential to produce a surprise performance at the World Twenty20 Cup, but not now. Andy Flower built a winter campaign based on consistency of selection and fantastic team spirit. Those were the qualities that helped them draw a Test series in South Africa. But all that seems to have been lost and we're back to being a Dogs Dinner XI. Sadly it seems to all mean that while England are [11.0] to make the World Cup their first ever global trophy but even at that price they aren't worth backing.

Five things you might not know about Steven Finn

1. Born in Watford in April 1989, his dad Terry was a left arm fast bowler in Minor Counties cricket for Hertfordshire.

2. He went to Parmiters School - they won the England Schools football title - and was a promising centre half for the district team as well as playing county basketball before giving other sports up for cricket

3.He made his Middlesex debut at 16, beating the record set by Fred Titmus in 1949 as the youngest to play for them in the County Championship

4. He passed 'A'levels but turned down the offer of a place to study history at University to pursue his cricket career - by then he'd played for England at Under 16, 17, 18 and 19 levels.

5. When it comes to music he's an Arctic Monkeys fan, and says the band's music helped get him through recovery from an operation to cure a groin injury when he was 18

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