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This is essentially a management problem not a cricketing one. It indicates that for all the talk of how the modern English game is efficiently managed, it remains a cottage industry dressed up with some fashionable management frills.

There are no great strategic and fundamental issues between Moores and Pietersen. Very simply, we have an old-fashioned personality clash. To be fair to Pietersen, he did give hints of this, even before his appointment as captain, when he said he needed to talk to Moores to clear the air.

Inevitably, stories of why they are not gelling that have emerged are a mixture of the trivial and the extraordinary. Among the trivial is one that centres on Moores asking players to practise immediately after a hard, tense victory over New Zealand. The request seems to have caused much resentment.

In the extraordinary category comes stories from well-informed sources who have told me of how Karen, Moores' wife, upset some staff at the as well as some players by what has been described to me as a high and mighty attitude. She is also said to have told a player he was dropped before he had been officially informed. Pietersen, I am told, was aware of some the problems she had with ECB staff and told them to keep him informed.

Even if we discount such stories, the like of which often emerge when people who work in such close, almost claustrophobic groups fall out, the fact is that Moores and Pietersen were always likely to make a very odd, disjointed couple.

Moores is part of the growing number of good-to-average county pros who see coaching as a way of extending their cricketing life.

Like many of them, Moores is given to reading books that aim to teach management success. His recent reading has included Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers: The Story of Success'. He might have been better advised to read Gladwell's more famous 'The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference'.

While Moores has his friends among the players, he can be abrasive while his approach could be, some may say, from the Bob Woolmer school of coaching: full of statistics and extensive use of laptop computers. It does not appeal to all the players, certainly not one like Pietersen.

Pietersen has never lacked confidence in his own ability and never needed a laptop to reassure him. I was first made aware of this some years ago when he was in dispute with his first English county, We met at his lawyer Naynesh Desai's offices in London. He had decided he did not want to play for his native country - he did not like their cricketing policies - and was determined to leave Notts, which he eventually did.

I was struck by his confidence but also his self-deprecating laugh when we discussed whether his off-spin would mean he could be an England all-rounder.

Since then, this confidence has burgeoned so that he now believes he can lead England to great cricketing heights. As we know, he also has the self-belief to invent new cricketing strokes, like the switchblade sweep. It is also this confidence that has made him all but publicly declare that he cannot work with the coach his employers have saddled him with.

The path Pietersen has chosen is certainly fraught with risk for him. but unless the triumph includes victory in the one-dayers that follow the Tests it will be a rather weakened Pietersen who will return home for the Ashes battle.

He may become a great batsman but not necessarily the great captain he would want to be.

For the ECB, this whole saga shows the danger of thinking neat management solutions work in cricket. Recall that in removing Duncan Fletcher after the 2007 World Cup the board overruled their then chairman David Morgan, who wanted Fletcher to carry on for a bit before casting round for a new coach.

The result has meant successive English captains having to adjust to a coach when in other countries, captains are involved in deciding who the coach should be.

It is worth remembering that a cricket coach is much, much less influential than a football manager while a cricket captain is much, much more important than a football captain.

Historically, successful teams like have got that balance right. This saga suggests English cricket has not.