London: English cricket has wasted one of its most precious resources for more than half a century. Former England captains used to run the game — chaps such as Lord Harris and Lord Hawke, or Sir Pelham Warner and Sir Gubby Allen - but when professionals from the 1950s were allowed to lead the side, they were not invited into the corridors of power after retiring and made do with commentary and columns.

Andrew Strauss is the first England captain for more than half a century to have gone into the game’s administration. How good is Strauss as the England Cricket director? Suffice to say that his leadership skills - first acquired as one of only three England captains to win an Ashes series home and away — prompted Colin Graves, the England and Wales Cricket Board chairman, to suggest to him a couple of weeks ago that Strauss should become the UK’s answer to Emmanuel Macron.

For the moment, however, there is no sign of a gap for a new political party - and, besides, English cricket needs him. When he took the job in 2015, the game was declining, quite rapidly, in terms of participation and its role in the national consciousness. “The whole drive of the ECB now,” Strauss says, “is to grow, broaden and develop the game, including the South Asian community. There is a real danger that kids won’t engage with cricket when there are so many other opportunities to use their time in other sports, not to mention video-gaming, and generally long-form cricket doesn’t turn them on.”

A solid basis is the new broadcasting deal which triples the ECB’s annual income and restores live TV coverage to free to air at last. The readers seem particularly concerned about the impact the new Twenty20 franchises will have on championship cricket, fearing that their introduction in 2020 will lead to the extinction of a competition that has existed for 150 years.

Now, here comes the similarity with Macron: Strauss does not make a promise - “we will save the championship” — which he might not be able to keep, as traditional politicians happily would.

Yet he reassures. “The intention is to protect the County Championship,” he said. “There is a lot of interest in County cricket, and in new ways like digital clips of wickets falling in championship matches, and that is encouraging. If we broaden the audience for cricket, more people will be interested in all forms, then TV rights and sponsors and crowds will follow.

“There is no reason why cricket shouldn’t be the No.1 alternative to football. And at a time when there are obvious divisions in society, cricket has a great role to play in bringing people together from all sorts of diverse backgrounds and faiths.”

The ECB’s own research - and their policies are now based on data, whereas they used to be a short-termist stab in the dark - shows that 40 per cent of cricket in the UK is played by British Asians. Two months after Strauss took over as team director, immediately removing Peter Moores as coach and renewing the ban on Kevin Pietersen, England against all expectations regained the Ashes.

One of his principles is to unite past and present. Hence, he asked Sir Ian Botham to address the England players before the first Ashes Test of 2015: hence, the masterstroke in late February, when England players - Test and one-day players, male and female, able and disabled - were united at a dinner and presented with their own individually numbered cap.

“I always thought we ought to recognise the blood, sweat and tears - and the sacrifices in being away from home - of former England players, and that current players should know what has come before,” he says.

Two years on from his appointment, however, and that unity of purpose was not enough to end England’s barren record in global one-day tournaments. Despite being favourites on home soil, England not only failed to win the recent Champions Trophy, but lost their semi-final to Pakistan, the eventual winners.

So, why? “My judgment is we played a bad game at the wrong time,” Strauss suggests. “All our one-day cricket leading up to that semi-final had been exactly what we are looking for - for example [in the previous game at Edgbaston] against Australia, taking wickets in the middle overs and reacting positively with the bat when under pressure - Eoin Morgan and Ben Stokes were phenomenal.

“It wasn’t a big-match failure, because of that confidence of winning over a long time,” he adds. “I don’t think we adapted too well to the conditions, perhaps thinking the pitch was harder than it was, and we must give credit to Pakistan for the way they bowled. Our plan [drawn up in 2015] for the 2019 World Cup was to see it as two separate two-year periods, so we are about to start the second phase.”

And here comes another part of Strauss’s vision, which is to devise pathways to the top from under-11s upwards. “When we introduced the North-South series [in the Gulf in March], it was to let the next generation show how good they are - like Mason Crane [Hampshire’s leg-spinner who made his England debut aged 20 against South Africa recently], and gauging him when bowling at older players like Tim Bresnan.

“It was based on a traditional rivalry [North vs South dates back to the 1830s] and it definitely gained traction, like players on opposite sides not talking to each other in the hotel, and players feeling pressure in the middle because they might not get another chance. I know it hurt the North a lot to be whitewashed by the South.”

In other words, the England team could well be refreshed before the next World Cup with a few new faces. No stone is left unturned. I thought that Alastair Cook should have resigned after the fourth Test in Mumbai, when England had lost the series and his heart was manifestly no longer in the job, allowing Joe Root to take his first steps as captain in the fifth at Chennai.

Strauss’s eventual appointments were exactly right - Root as Test captain, Stokes as vice-captain - but weren’t they belated? Here his experience of having been the England captain himself is priceless. “It’s best to avoid making decisions when they are deeply emotional,” he says.

So, he waited until Cook had come home, then met him twice, before accepting Cook’s resignation. Due process, thoroughly observed. So, I will concede: England will get more out of Cook in future as an opening batsman and senior statesman than if he had hurriedly resigned in India, and this will outweigh the initial adverse effect on Root going into the South Africa series without having got his feet under the table. But Strauss’s hands are tied over the current schedule.

Indeed, the Future Tours Programme was agreed by the previous regime of the ECB until 2023, with precious little wriggle-room: “If people play all formats for England, they will play more international cricket than anyone else.”

He will, however, always make the best of a bad job. “Every game has got to mean more. Context is vital so people know exactly how important it is to win a game - and so cricket invades the national consciousness more than it does.”

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2017