So, Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood have stepped down as England captains, and been replaced in both forms of the game (all three if you count 20/20) by Kevin Pietersen, the preening run machine who hails from South Africa...

Vaughan’s abdication looks to be well timed.  There seems to be a natural shelf life for England captains, and along with the crawling feeling that he wasn’t scoring enough runs to justify his place in the side, it simply felt like time for a change, and evidently with Vaughan’s personal life beginning to feel the strain, he felt it was time to go. 

It was a tearful press conference where he announced his decision but I fervently hope the tears were purely the emotion of a major change in his life, rather than any feeling of letting anyone down – Vaughan is one of England’s most successful captains, and bagged the Ashes in 2005, which is what he will be remembered for, not the recent close defeat to South Africa.  

His legacy will be in the thousands of boys and girls who started taking an interest in cricket in that golden summer of 2005, and may be the stars who fight for the urn in decades to come.  In any case, his dad’s proud of him – who wouldn’t be – and no doubt a sigh of relief has gone through his circle of loved ones – no more extreme pressure.

He has chosen to skip the next test, with Ravi Bopara appearing to get a chance to cement a place, but has made himself available to tour  India this winter, and on into the future.   Slog6 fervently hope he flowers again as a batsman – time is on his side – as he’s about as attractive a right hander as you’ll ever see.   To watch time apparently stand still as he cover drives, while appearing to take a few seconds to decide which side of the cover fielder he’ll caress the ball, is one of the great pleasures of cricket.  If you asked Australia whether they’d prefer the former world number one batsman to retire altogether, or to be in the England lineup in 2009, they would unquestionably prefer him to put his feet up, and that’s enough for me.

So what of his replacement, Kevin Pietersen ?  Well, he comes with a bit of a reputation – both as a monumental ego, and as a fanatically hard working  practice machine with a steely determination.   My favourite quote about him is “when he wakes up in the morning, he looks in the mirror and is not exactly displeased about what he sees”.   Well, life’s about to get tougher for him in a big way.   There is no doubt that his batting will be under scrutiny and this could cause problems – he is an attacking player, and the sort of criticism he received for holing out off South African spinner Paul Harris – in our opinion wholly undeserved, on balance not a bad percentage choice that just didn’t work on the day – will be magnified tenfold as the skipper.