I've no objection to arguments that Fletcher was right to dispense with Ramps: I disagree, but they are fair enough - I'd just like to see them made without the unsustainable argument that Ramps "couldn't make the step up to Test Cricket": one only need prove one's worth once against the strongest opponents to dispense with that argument.

The argument that ditching Ramps was right can be made (more coherently) without that argument.

For what it's worth.... I long defended Fletcher's right to pick bits-n-pieces nobodies and folk with more temperament than talent because (quite aside from anything else) it was quite self-evidently the only way he stood any chance of delivering. I also felt that for so long as he was coach.. he needed the opportunity to show just how far his approach could take the side.

Whilst defending Fletcher's right to build a side around the temperaments of Tresco, Hussain and Collingwood.. I never lost sight of the fact that other ways existed: the fact that Fletcher didn't have the skills to get the most out of key players should certainly not, to my mind, be taken as evidence that those players were incapable of fulfilling their potential.

I continue to regard getting the most out of such talents as the principle responsibility of the coach: I don't doubt for one moment that a different coach could have got much, much more from Crawley, Ramps and Caddick back then... and from Bell, Read and Harmison more recently.

Now we just need to hope that Moores might be the man to do that for the next more fragile temperament...