Robin Smith once more looks vulnerable while Graeme Hick continues to resist the chance to establish himself

Robin Smith once more looks vulnerable, while Graeme Hick continues to resist the chance to establish himself beyond any doubt. Then there are John Crawley and Mark Ramprakash, players for whom a guaranteed extended run in the side may be what is required. So is Mike Atherton, whether or not he is captain, and Jack Russell, whose form in South Africa, with gloves and bat, was one of the few sources of real satisfaction and underlined what a nonsense it had been to keep him out of the team in favour of a so-called wicketkeeper-batsman in Alec Stewart.This season may be crunch time for Stewart, who endured a worse winter than most. "Too many of us underperformed," said Graham Thorpe on his return, knowing he was one of them.As a genuine world-class player himself, Thorpe is someone around whom England can confidently build for the future. Whatever else the players may lack, relevant advice should not be among them.Ah, the players. So little have they figured in the discussion of recent weeks that an outsider could have been forgiven for thinking that cricket was not a sport at all but simply a form of politics.Great players do not abound in the English game, so the emphasis must be on making sure that every last ounce of potential is realised - something that plainly did not happen in South Africa.

It should be stressed, however, that it was England's one-day form rather than their Test form which was the real disappointment of last winter.If every year has come to represent a chance for the England team to make a fresh start, that is particularly the case going into the 1996 season, in which it is reasonable to expect some improvement - in outlook as much as anything - as a result of David Lloyd's appointment as coach.Lloyd has said he wants the team to be fitter and run better between the wickets - basics which it seems incredible that any England cricketer should need reminding about.With David Graveney back for a second term as a selector and Graham Gooch joining the panel, the number of people surrounding the England team with a close understanding of the contemporary game increases further. While the overwhelming home defeat by Australia in 1993 stands out, it has, on the whole, been on tours that England have conspicuously failed - which is why the arrival of spring always seems to bring with it the hand-wringing that is going on now. England's recent record in home Test series is quite respectable. Since the start of the 1990 season, they have won series against New Zealand (twice) and India, drawn twice with West Indies and once with South Africa, and been narrowly beaten by Pakistan. The overblown saga of the appointment of two Test selectors is, mercifully, now ended, but somewhere down another corridor the David Acfield working party, set up in the light of England's World Cup failure, is doing whatever working parties do, and even further into the game's administrative recesses, committees and sub-committees are edging their way towards working out how to form an English Cricket Board.Potentially far-reaching though these developments are - a more competitive county structure must be one outcome - none of them can be expected to mean a great deal to the wider cricketing public, to whom the most pressing question is whether England can get some pride back into their performances in this summer's two three-Test series, against India and Pakistan, and start winning again.In many ways, the picture is not nearly as black as it is being painted. Wrestling with the vexed question of what is wrong with the England team, Smith told his audience that he had been struck while watching the World Cup by how much fun the other teams seemed to be having. "Somehow we've got to get that enjoyment back into the England side," he said.

These remarks took some listeners by surprise - not least because Smith, as far as his public persona is concerned anyway, is about as dry as they come, an establishment man to his polished shoes whose idea of what constitutes a good time would perhaps not quite accord with, say, Ian Botham's. There was also something a little naive about his assessment of England's problems - as if the team could simply smile their way out of the mire of failure into which they had well and truly sunk by the time Sri Lanka sent them packing in Faisalabad in early March. For all that, Smith was hitting upon the aspect of England's winter that most dismayed their followers - the way that, over five months, the mood of optimism with which they set out for South Africa declined into a cussed negativity and an apparent loss of desire at a time when it should have been at its keenest.So as the new domestic season drifts in on a not-so chill wind blowing across Fenner's and the Parks, the state of the game is yet again a subject of intense debate. Tails never fails for me."Robbie was not just born with the full Paul cargo of talent, it seems, but born lucky as well.. At the annual dinner to mark the publication of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack three weeks ago the guest speaker was AC Smith, the chief executive of the Test and County Cricket Board.

I don't know whether any other club has ever done it quite like that, but it works for us."Paul's greatest influence over his side springs from his ability to create something out of nothing, with that family trademark spin out of the tackle, or with a visionary pass to switch the direction of the attack.There is one area of the captain's duties, however, where he boasts a record that would be hard to beat "I'm an expert tosser of the coin," he says "I've got about a 95 per cent success rate. In fact, when there are tactical decisions to be made, we tend to work it out between us. Once settled back into the scrum-half role he had not played since school, Robbie has proved a thrillingly creative player, blessed with the family talent for improvisation.One back-flipped pass in the semi-final victory over Leeds evoked an audible gasp for its audacity; it was ruled just forward, but that seemed a mere detail.Henry, with whom Robbie used to sit up in the early hours in Auckland to watch Wembley finals, has given him a few words of advice based on his appearance there with Wigan last year."He says that when I walk out there it will be unlike anything I've ever experienced and that the best way to settle the nerves is to make sure I make an early run and an early tackle."It is hard to imagine an effervescent character like Paul failing to be heavily involved from the outset, but he does not make a big issue out of being captain."With experienced players like Graeme Bradley, Jeremy Donougher and Bernard Dwyer out there, I'm not going to be telling them how to play the game," he says "They know what to do. I can be one of the best players in the competition.'" In fact, Smith was sold on Paul from the start. Unlike his predecessor, Peter Fox, who played him reluctantly and infrequently, he made it clear that Paul was central to his plans by making him scrum-half and, equally surprisingly at 19, captain."It had been frustrating the previous season.