It was the time when the constant fight between Paul Downton - then director of cricket - and Kevin Pietersen played out in public and there was an abrupt ending to the romance that had started in 2005. It was fun until it lasted but why did it have to be that way? Pietersen was at the forefront of literally all the success that England had since the turn of the millennium but faced an unceremonious sacking. 

Almost at the same time, Steve Finn was left to do his soul-searching while an overused Graeme Swann decided to call it a day, simply because of the fact he couldn’t accommodate himself with the rigours of Test schedule, while Jonathan Trott, after being bruised by Mitchell Johnson, took time out and eventually fell apart in the international circuit. Most significantly, the likes of Alastair Cook and Joe Root had also lost their form and the perils of it are still felt in English cricket.

This tells a story about how England and Wales Cricket Board failed to learn anything from the Trott or more recently, Cook fiasco. After turning up for no less than consecutive 159 Tests, only at the age of 33, the former English skipper decided to call it a day because the spirit was waning. Looking at Joe Root, it seems like history is laughing at English cricket. 

What could be the possible repercussions of it or was it because the World Cup added the extra mileage which messed up the workload management, especially because the Ashes was unavoidable? When the English skipper came for the press conference before The Oval Test, the answer was written all over his face. Then he decided to speak about it. “It’d be wrong to say I’m not. It’s been 10 weeks of hard cricket, high emotions, ups and downs, and it does take a lot out of you.” 

A rest might make things up and he might get his mojo back, but this also tells a very difficult tale about the English team. And for that, I will again go back to the last phase of Jonathan Trott’s career. He had a disastrous tour of Australia, where Mitchell Johnson made him suffer to no end, but the cricket anorak that Trott was, he must have felt he could bounce back in West Indies. However, when he was dismissed in the second innings of that final Test in Barbados, everything seemed like a torment and Brisbane public humiliation followed. 

The only thing that had kept him going in his life - batting - was no more his ally and he didn’t have anything to fall back on. For one of England’s greatest fighters in red-ball cricket, the tragic became a reality because the edge was gone and so was the fun element. I would quote another factoid here. In the five years of his Test career, Swann bowled 2,558 overs and as a matter of fact, outside of his own team, there wasn’t a bowler anywhere in the world who even came close to that. Who took the blame for it? 

Shouldn’t England learn from the same now and ensure a level playing field for its players to express themselves on the field and have fun on the beaches with their family or least, grab a bottle of beer in their own dining hall and talk about the good things with his wife and parents? It is highly doubtful that the current scheduling allows any players any downtime. 

From the looks of it, it doesn’t seem like it was going to happen in the next couple of years too, or even beyond that. ECB prepare themselves for "The Hundred", which is going to debut at the same time as the domestic 50-over competition, and given the stance that the board has taken amidst all opposition to the newly-found format, it would be surprising if any star English players stay away from it. Considering all the above factors, don’t be surprised if England keep falling down in Test cricket, although it is completely possible that they could pick themselves up. As was in Trott’s case, the signs are ominous for the current English cricket team too.