I'll come clean on this. I haven't applied for the vacant England bowling coach post. That will come as little surprise to those of you who might have had the misfortune of witnessing me turning my arm over. Indeed, if you have, you can count yourself among a very unfortunate minority.

When Don Shepherd, whose 2,000+ first class wickets give him some considerable clout in the field, said that I was the worst bowler he had ever seen, he was spot on. And he didn't just mean professional bowlers but ALL bowlers, everywhere.

Mind you, I did once take two wickets at Malpas for Wales Schools Under 15s against Scotland with some filthy leg spin. Somebody must remember that, surely. I certainly do. I was only bowling because I was captain, by the way.

Anyway my point is that so many other people have apparently applied to be England 's new bowling coach. South Africa's Allan Donald has left everyone in no doubt that he thinks he is the best man for the job. Phillip De Freitas, the former Leicestershire all-rounder who left that county amidst such dark mutterings last summer, is the latest to throw his hat in the ring. Waqar Younis, as I said in an earlier column, is also supposed to be in the frame and Darren Gough's name has been mentioned.

I will be very surprised if any of these big names does land the job. I'm not sure that any of them has the technical and bio-mechanical knowledge and experience required.

That might sound a strange thing to say but it comes back to that old adage that the best players do not necessarily make the best coaches. I have always believed in that; in fact I think that the best coaches are often those who have had to endure a good deal of failure and misfortune, especially if they have battled their way through to become very good players.

I always remember the great Sir Vivian Richards attempting to impart some technical advice in the Glamorgan dressing-room and thinking, "he doesn't really know how he does it, he just does it."

That is often the case with the greats. They play on instinct, merely using their God-given talents. Richards was superb at motivating us and instilling a will to win which had been so obviously missing at Glamorgan before the 1990s, but a batting coach he was never going to be.

Coaching in general is a funny business. I still have no idea how you determine who is going to be a good coach, but what I do know is that it is not a good idea to go straight from playing to coaching the same side. In county cricket that has been proved by the likes of Mike Gatting at Middlesex and even Mark Alleyne at Gloucestershire, where he was a player/coach last year and will be coach alone next season.

Of course we can take this principle across to rugby, where the Cardiff Blues have done something similar - with calamitous results if last Sunday's shambolic performance at Leeds is any measure - with Dai Young. And Rob Howley had been at Wasps at the end of his career but is a former Cardiff player who has been handed his first coaching role at the club.

It is always difficult - and often dangerous - to criticise coaches from the outside because, unless you can see at first hand what is happening in the side's preparation, then you are speculating. The players are the ones who still have to go out and perform after all. But the point is that in any sport sustained failure can only go on for so long before change is necessary. Every coach must know that.

But the change in England's cricket regime has come about for very different reasons; namely that the England and Wales Cricket Board dithered over a new contract for the highly regarded Troy Cooley. They should have handed him what he wanted in May but the delay just meant that his stock rose and rose as the Ashes summer unfolded until the Australians realised that it was high time to reclaim one of their own.

Simon Jones, to name just one, is livid about Cooley's departure, losing not just a top coach but one of his best mates too.

I think the post will probably go to Kevin Shine, a former fast bowler with Hampshire, Middlesex and Somerset, and latterly a coach at that last county. His presence as a highly ranked coach merely confirms my befuddlement with the process of coach identification and their effectiveness.

I will never forget the words of my opening partner Hugh Morris after we had encountered Shine for the first time at Hampshire. As we met in the middle of the pitch after Shine's first over, during which he had said more than the odd word, Morris said: "Oh God, Sid, another angry young man wanting to knock our heads off." And Morris would be one of the men to employ Shine at the ECB! As I said, coaching is a complete mystery to me.