1. How many series has KP significantly contributed to victory a la Gooch, Gower or Cook? Certainly since his comeback from injury/ the cold.
2. How many series did Cook win against teams that hadn't got their own internal problems? Once we got up against South Africa and the Lehman-inspired Aussies look what happened.
This is the problem - caused by conservatism in strategy and distain for county cricket - meaning that a case could be made for making the reverse decision: keeping KP & sacking Capn Cook, which would've been worse IMHO.
Wasn't Strauss captain when we lost to SA?
But the point remains that the England team has performed OK against weaker sides, but coming up against better ones hasn't been that great - compared to , say, when Nasser had been in charge a few series he looked the part and noticeably raised the game of the team. Notwithstanding the odd poor Ashes series when we at least used to win a few matches and kept the team on the tour! At least, if a KP-type player had been around then it would've been easier for a more established skipper to off-load him.
Still, interesting performances from Lees in SL, Tymal seems to be scaring the batters out there as well. County cricket is still producing quality despite having 'too many counties'.