England's resurgence

The fact that England is beginning to assume an Australia like win consistency is good for cricket. One tends to sit up and take notice when a team has just finished winning its 8th test match in a row. This is particularly great for a team which has not been a model of consistency over the last decade and for all practical purposes been a pretty ordinary team since the early 90's.

It is interesting to see how this team has become arguably the second best team in World cricket today. True, the emergence of Steve Harmison as a potent wicket taking force and Flintoff as a world-class allrounder has helped to a large extent, but I think the bulk of the credit for this resurgence has to go to Duncan Fletcher and the two captains he has worked with in the last few years - Nasser Hussain and Michael Vaughan. The English team has had a long-term strategy and this strategy has been executed to perfection by the team leadership. England always had quality batsmen - Trescothick, Vaughan, Thorpe, Butcher - they have all been around for some time. What is different these days is the belief that the batting line-up has in its ability to score runs and the fact that they are consistenly gelling together as a team to put runs on the board.

Steve Harmison was not the tearway he has become today when he started. But the team leadership noticed his potential and invested in him during the off-season by providing him the infrastructure he needed to be in top physical condition when the next season started. They have also been very astute with their personnel changes - and this has been meant that good new talent like Andrew Strauss and Geraint Jones has come into the side at the right time.

The ashes series next year will certainly be more evenly contested than it has been over the last decade or so. The English story is inspiring for other struggling teams and provides a model that can be emulated to good effect.