Bramwell Speaks Out column, by sports editor Neil Bramwell

ENGLAND Cricket coach David Lloyd has one last major decision to make before stepping down at the end of the World Cup.

And that is to install a new skipper before the tournament begins.

For Alec Stewart has lately shown the inspirational qualities of a cabbage patch doll.

Just when the other main contenders are gathering momentum and playing fierce, aggressive cricket, England are showing the fighting qualities of a synchronised swimming team without their nose clips.

The timing of the dispute over World Cup contracts is bizarre and another masterstroke of English Cricket Board planning.

Having already thrown the structure of the recreational game into turmoil, Lord MacLaurin and his mates have now succeeded in antagonising the very players entrusted with resurrecting the sport in England.

(I wonder if the Lancashire Cricket Board took note of our revelation that the Accrington Midweek League has only four teams for this season. Surely this is provides a new convenient option for their proposed Premier League.)

Maybe the ECB's ill-founded funding of Premier League competitions is stretching their resources so thinly that rewarding the cream of the country's players is no longer considered important.

It is a fact, however sad, that professional sportsmen are primarily driven by financial reward.

The game, ever increasingly dependent on one-day revenue, desperately needs a successful World Cup and, even more importantly, a successful England campaign.

So the England side cannot afford to be led by a captain whose motivational ability and personal form is in question.

Admittedly, alternatives are thin on the ground.

But surely the players are more likely to respond positively to an old warhorse such as Angus Fraser or a talisman like Graham Thorpe than the tried, tested and failed leadership of Stewart.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.