Skip over, Freddie

So there you are. 5-0. The Ashes Whitewash. No longer will a giant home win football (say 7-0) be known as a cricket score, instead a heavy away win will be an England 'Ashes' score. 0-7.

As is typical when something goes wrong, a large-scale review is launched. This is cricket learning from Government. When in doubt, have a probe/review/investigation/public inquiry.

But for the sake of cricket, or English cricket at least, this one can't just be brushed under the carpet - so no need to call in Lord Hutton, then.

Even Andrew Flintoff agrees. In his home-town paper, the Lancashire Evening Post, he said it was important that the 5-0 whitewash wasn't a pointless exercise.

Of course it's easy to say that now, just as it was easy, if slightly odd, for Flintoff to say at 4-0 that England still had something left to play for.

He goes on to say that some of the players played well, some of the time. How true. Sadly, Freddie wasn't one of them.

He points to three players who scored centuries. One each. Australia had seven different players hitting centuries.

Most tellingly, although 'Freddie' probably doesn't realise this, he admitted: "Australia stuck to their plans and exploited weaknesses and that's something we can look at."

Spot on, My fellow once-a-Preston dweller. And here's weakness number one: Freddie as captain.

When is sport going to learn that natural ability - ie scoring runs and bowling fantastically well - doesn't naturally translate into being a natural Captain Fantastic.

Listening to his ramblings after each Test Match - It's just one game we've lost/there's still three more to go/We've got to take the positives from these three games/there's still something to play for in the last game/this can't be a pointless exercise - made me want to chew my hand off rather than have to listen to anymore.

So heaven only knows what it must be like being a professional cricketer, at the peak of your game, receiving pep talks from him ahead of a match. His speeches sounded more like those desperate screams you hear from the footie terraces on a Saturday afternoon when deluded fans believe they can still turn round a 2-0 scoreline in the last 10 minutes, than the careful prose of the captain.

The simple fact of the matter is that, with Freddie off form, we struggle. And what's changed between the Ashes we won and the Ashes we lost - other than the hemisphere played in? That's right, Freddie's the captain. Great honour and all that, but even he must realise for the good of the game, he's not the man for the job.

It was the same with Ian Botham. And in football, the same with David Beckham. The odd flash of brilliance here, a bit there, but certainly not what we'd come to expect from Beckham. And when players in a team see their captain struggling to reach peak form, they get distracted, concerned. The confidence as a whole starts to go.

The best teams in any sport are those captained by people who are an intergral part of the team but not always the shining light. Take Blackburn Rovers when they won (or bought) the Premiership. Who do you remember from that team? Alan Shearer. Was he captain? No. It was midfielder Tim Sherwood - a man whose role enabled him to lead from the middle. The team didn't rely on his goals. The same goes with Manchester United - look how successful they were with Roy Keane as captain.

So it's time to see Freddie take his own advice. Don't do a Blair and promise to fix something then blame all around you and paint yourself whiter than white. After all, I'm sure Freddie wouldn't want Blair doing a Freddie - and coming round to p*** in his back garden - something we should be entitled to do after the shower we've had to suffer down under.