Letters: It is not the players but the ECB that's to blame for the pitiful Ashes defeat in Australia

SIR – Tim Wigmore (Sport, December 26) is right: the current Ashes debacle is not caused the players but by the men in suits.

The England and Wales Cricket Board has augmented the diet of sub-standard, Twenty20 county cricket with a pointless competition lasting 100 balls at the peak of the English cricket season. It has virtually abolished 50-over cricket, despite England being the World Champions after trying for almost 50 years.

The ECB has also been accused of failing to curb racism. How can this be a surprise when it demonstrates such incompetence in running our national game? If they were not paid, one would describe its members as a group of talentless amateurs.

John Hanson
Canterbury, Kent

SIR – It is not the current Test team itself but the ECB that should shoulder most of the responsibly for the total failure to be competitive in this Ashes series. It is the ECB that should be justifying to the press its strategy for the past 10 years and not the players, who are merely the product of a dysfunctional system of first-class cricket in England.

Robert Farnes
Limpsfield, Surrey

SIR – Following the debacle in Australia these past two weeks, what more will it take for the ECB to realise it has made a dreadful mistake in the way it has run English cricket?

The County Championship has been sidelined to late spring and early autumn in favour of an endless diet of one-day cricket during the summer months. Players were allowed to play in Indian Premier League T20 matches rather than in Test matches for England, while those sent to Australia were expected to compete having played in no first-class matches prior to the first Test match.

Watch: 6 Minute Full Body Strength Workout | Move At Home

The longer format of the game is dying; this is despite players saying that the pinnacle of any season for them is to win the County Championship. One-day cricket is an undoubted success, both from audience attendances and the money it brings in. However, in their effort to make bigger profits, the authorities have relegated the first-class game to the margins. The current tour of Australia is merely a continuation of the downward slide Test cricket has been in for several years. One-day games should be played at weekends, with county games played during the week. County Championships currently feature too many players who do not quality for the national side, which is also to the detriment of Test cricket.

Many cricket lovers despair at the direction Test cricket has been heading in, and will do so until there is some major reconstruction work.

Matthew Biddlecombe
Sampford Courtenay, Devon

SIR – For Joe Root to suggest that England are as good as Australia is preposterous. The gulf between the sides is such that, time and again, Australia make England look like an English village team. And if an English village team was getting thrashed every time, their opponents would drop the fixture. Perhaps it is time for world cricket to create two divisions.

I P Barratt
Great Totham, Essex

SIR – The one good thing about this dire England cricket team in Australia is they are so poor that the agony is not prolonged over five days, but matches finish in three. We are grateful.

Ian Jolliffe
Bingley, West Yorkshire

SIR – I cannot help thinking that half-a-dozen “batsmen” would have done better than our “batters”.

Charlie Flindt
Hinton, Hampshire

SIR – Is the recent display from our cricketers a representation of the problems Britain faces generally?

Richard Owen
Lightwater, Surrey

Conservative choices

SIR – Kate Andrews (Comment, December 23) writes off Boris Johnson much too soon. However, she is right that there is a philosophical struggle in the Conservative Party. Small-c conservatives and libertarians both believe in personal liberty, but conservatives believe that responsibilities should accompany rights.

More specifically, where personal choices profoundly affect other people, or lead to extra spending by the state, conservatives believe that the state has the right to seek to influence choices, as the late Roger Scruton argued in areas from town planning to the use of social media.

Both groups should wish to maximise free choice over Covid precautions, but, where people expect the state to treat them – at great expense – if they catch Covid, yet refuse to be vaccinated, it is surely fair that the state should introduce Covid passports even if vaccination did not affect transmission. (The evidence is that while vaccination does not prevent transmission, it reduces the risk to others).

This applies more widely. There is nothing inconsistent about conservatives pressing for lower taxes, as libertarians do, yet supporting taxes on sugar because of the burden on the taxpayer in increased health and social care costs of people choosing to become obese.

I suspect that there is a conservative majority in this country. Most people believe in balancing rights and responsibilities.

Sir Julian Brazier
Canterbury, Kent

Named and shamed

SIR – I recently attempted to fill in an online application form.

I entered my first name as requested.

Next, I entered my surname.

Further progress was halted with the following warning: “Inappropriate language detected, please remove before continuing.”

Simon Cox
Brixham, South Devon

That loving feeling

SIR – Today I have received no fewer than six emails in which the writers announce that they are “reaching out” to me.

Do they really feel the need to touch me that much?

Richard Dalgleish
Kingsclere, Hampshire

Russia and the West

SIR – Mikhail Gorbachev (report, December 24) is right: triumphalism in the 1990s and the arrogance of the West has led to the rise of Russian nationalism. President Vladimir Putin is tapping in to a deep-seated fear of Western expansionism, stoked by the growth of Nato and the EU.

There is fault on both sides; Russia cannot see why many of its bordering countries do not wish to be dependent on and subjugated by it once again, and the West does not understand the huge psychological shock the collapse of the USSR caused the current Russian leaders.

Western leaders demonstrate little understanding of the history, diplomacy or psychology that led to the decline in our relationship with Russia.

After spending many years travelling to and working in Russia, it became clear to me how hard it was for those born in Soviet times. Having been told that they were in the best society, with the best schools, health system and a military powerhouse, to accept the collapse was a massive blow. As a result, as with Germany in the 1930s, many like the idea of a rebirth of power.

We need diplomats who can develop an approach that protects the countries in between, but also allows Russia to regain its pride and become a democracy with an economy that does not just depend on natural resources.

Watch: 5 Minute Home Core Workout Without Equipment | Move At Home

With both Russia and China on the move, and an increasingly inward- looking and poorly led America, Europe is vulnerable on many fronts.

Michael Pelly
London SW6

SIR – What are the chances that if Russia did move in Ukraine, China would act in the South China Sea or Taiwan at the same time?

Andy Munro
All Stretton, Shropshire

Deadly imports

SIR – While I was interested to read about the discovery of a deadly viper in a pile of bricks imported from India (report, December 23), why is Britain not making its own bricks?

Frank Smith
Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire

Unwanted instruction

SIR – Our son gave his mother a new hot water bottle for Christmas. Made in China, it is stamped: “Keep heat water bag far from baby.” She is 82.

Antony Mackenzie-Smith
Abergavenny, Monouthshire

An architect with an aggressively futuristic style

SIR – As an architectural historian, I will not be mourning the late Richard Rogers (Obituary, December 20). His lack of respect for the past was spectacularly demonstrated by the aggressive Pompidou Centre, which was placed in the hitherto serene Marais district of Paris.

This attitude was confirmed by a predilection for colouring his buildings lime green or orange to achieve maximum obtrusiveness, and by the ruthless gutting of his own Georgian house in Chelsea. He also vocally derided the architecture of contemporaries who did evince interest in the past. All of this was of a piece with Tony Blair’s shiny new Cool Britannia, in which Rogers hoovered up commissions and one of whose darlings he inevitably was.

Roger White
Sherborne, Dorset

SIR – Asking directions to the new Centre Pompidou while living in Paris in 1977, I was told: “It’s the one with coloured drainpipes on the outside.” I found it.

Barbara Paul
Salford, Lancashire

Subtitles are not the solution to ‘mumbledom’

sir – Your editorial on “mumbledom” (December 28) says that the solution is to turn on the subtitles. However, I believe that the showrunner or producer should put headphones on someone unfamiliar with the script and, after each take, ask whether it was intelligible.

My sympathies are also with the sound recordists, who feel compelled to remain mum.

Stephen Greif
Richmond, Surrey

SIR – Your editorial seems cravenly to capitulate to the programme directors who insist on actors mumbling in the pursuit of reality.

The solution is not to turn on the subtitles, it is for actors to enunciate with clarity, despite directors’ wishes.

JPG Bolton
Bishops Lydeard, Somerset

SIR – The solution to inaudible dialogue is twofold: curb directors’ attempts at “realism” and teach actors to speak clearly. Modern televisions are not to blame, as anyone who watches repeats of old programmes well knows.

What we need are actors who can project their voice and not depend on technology to do it for them, and directors who understand that they are there to satisfy viewers’ needs, not their own artistic whims.

Peter Bruce
Ruskington, Lincolnshire

SIR – What a relief to read that directors are to blame for mumbled dialogue. I had assumed that my hearing was deteriorating, so bought a head set for a clearer sound (it does help). Now I realise that I’ve been gaslighted.

Kay Brazier
Swettenham, Cheshire

Letters to the Editor

We accept letters by post, fax and email only. Please include name, address, work and home telephone numbers.
ADDRESS: 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 0DT
FAX: 020 7931 2878
EMAIL: dtletters@telegraph.co.uk
FOLLOW: Telegraph Letters on Twitter @LettersDesk