The removal of Duncan Fletcher as England coach constituted a very British coup. The speed of events in Barbados last week — Peter Moores was revealed as his successor within 24 hours of confirmation that Fletcher was leaving — was breathtaking and revealing. The speed betrayed the extent to which Fletcher’s departure had been prepared for, even sought.

Although Fletcher resigned, those at the centre of English cricket had long ago concluded that he wielded an unhealthy degree of power and that essential restructuring in the management of the national team could take place only once he was gone. Senior figures believed that Fletcher was finished months ago.

Whether he really wanted to go is a moot point. There was a suggestion that he had only tendered his resignation in the hope that it would be rejected. His last ally, Nasser Hussain, the former England captain, said he didn’t think Fletcher looked like a man ready to quit. He also criticised David Morgan, the board’s chairman, for his lukewarm farewell to Fletcher.

Because of a failure in the way the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had structured things, Fletcher had never really been answerable to anybody since he became coach in 1999 and, for all his successes, his autocratic ways had led to all manner of friction. Patience with his methods had run out among players and administrators, and the lack of confidence he inspired was reflected in the collapse of onfield performances. Even one of the backroom staff was conceding that it was time for change.

It would be logical and right if one of the findings of the Schofield review of England affairs, due early next month and predicted by one senior ECB source to be “quite radical”, proposed a managing director of the national team to oversee selection, tours, discipline and above all the way the coach operates, so that the mistakes of the Fletcher era are not repeated.

Choosing this director could prove tricky. The right man must be skilled in cricket and management if he is to command respect. Tom Moody, the Sri Lanka coach who might have taken Fletcher’s position, has been proposed for this post, but there could be home-grown applicants in the board’s deputy chief executive, Hugh Morris, chairman of selectors David Graveney and John Carr, who as director of England cricket occupies a poor man’s version of the job already.

Other changes are needed. Michael Vaughan deserves the chance to resume as captain of the Test side, but the one-day team must be passed on to Paul Collingwood, one of the few automatic picks. A fielding coach is needed and the bowlers must remember what they forgot when Troy Cooley left and reverse-swing the ball again. Steve Harmison should be told to get his fitness back to its level of 2004. Andy Flower should replace Matthew Maynard as batting coach.

The striking thing about Moores’s appointment was how little consultation there was, although strictly none was needed, as David Collier, the board’s chief executive, has sole authority for selecting the coach.

Mysteriously, alternative candidates were not seriously considered. Nobody else was formally approached, although feelers were put out in a few directions. But there was a strong feeling that after eight years of a foreigner running the team, it was time that English cricket stood on its own feet.

England’s minds were clearly made up. Collier said yesterday that Moores had been approached by another Test side — probably West Indies — and the board was anxious not to lose him. Moores had in effect been a secret heir apparent since 2005, when it was thought that Fletcher might stand down after the Ashes series in England. That was the year Moores was chosen to take over from Rod Marsh as head coach of the academy, beating off competition from Moody and putting himself in pole position to succeed Fletcher.

The media had been led to expect that Moores would be named only as caretaker on Friday, but that was simply a holding position if he was not prepared to agree terms until the parameters of the job had been redrawn after Schofield’s recommendations. But because Morris is secretary to the Schofield committee, the ECB knows full well what the likely findings are — it is essentially an in-house inquiry — and Moores was happy to take on trust what his new duties would entail.

As it happened, England’s surprise victory in 2005 persuaded Fletcher to carry on, but this caused disquiet among those who had seen how Fletcher, whose communications skills were not as great as his technical or tactical nous, had treated those outside his England “bubble” since 1999. When England toured Pakistan in 2000, he didn’t respond to any e-mails sent to him by one senior board official. One selector he never phoned in three years. Stories of him not speaking to junior or peripheral players are legion.

His tours of the 18 counties failed to build trust between two parties at loggerheads over Fletcher’s refusal to release his England players. The Schofield review may provide a damning chronicle of his broader management skills.

It would have been entirely understandable if Fletcher had been worn down by a brutal schedule and a string of defeats, but at their press conference on Thursday, Morgan and Carr skirted around his precise motives for leaving.

Others were less coy. Even before it was publicly known that he was going, Brian Rose, the former Somerset and England batsman and a member of Schofield’s seven-man review group, told reporters that Fletcher was no longer motivating the players. When England were knocked out by South Africa last Tuesday, Ian Botham — who is close to Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen — spoke on television of “divisions in the camp”. Another insider described the practice session two days ahead of that pivotal game as a “shambles”.

“Something’s not right,” he added. “Something has happened.” Was the timing of Fletcher’s decision significant? He told Carr he was intending to tender his resignation at the end of the tournament two days after England had lost to Australia despite being in a glorious position at 164 for two in the 30th over.

Two key aspects to the game were another failure by Flintoff, miserably stumped stepping down the pitch to attempt a forward defensive, and a feisty 104 from Pietersen that could have been more had wickets not fallen at the other end.

There has been speculation about the state of Flintoff’s relationship with Fletcher all winter. They have always been chalk and cheese; Flintoff was too free-spirited for the coach’s tastes and their relationship suffered during the losses in Australia. Under intense fire over Monty Panesar’s exclusion from the Test team in Adelaide, Fletcher tried to spread the blame by pointing out that he was not the only selector, implicitly pointing the finger at Flintoff.

Flintoff did not make things easy for Fletcher with late-night drinking sessions that earned him several warnings before he offended once too often in St Lucia last month, just 36 hours before a match against Canada. After his previous warnings, action was bound to be severe, but Flintoff may still have felt that after driving himself to exhaustion in England’s cause many times, he was harshly treated in being dropped for one match and stripped of the vice-captaincy.

Flintoff was thought not to be enamoured of the team management after that; it possibly showed in his cricket. And being such a talismanic player, his problems were bound to affect others.

Pietersen was in a different position. As the heaviest scorer in the team, he was burdened with carrying the batting and he may have tired of the repeated failures of those around him. He struck a solitary figure at times,a man fighting a lonely, futile campaign. At the moment of England’s exit, the first thing he did was go up to Jacques Kallis, who is vying to finish as the tournament’s leading runscorer, and ask if they could swap shirts. Kallis says he has agreed to give him his shirt after the World Cup is over. Pietersen also may not be too distressed to see Fletcher go.

Fletcher needed some convincing by Rod Marsh to select Pietersen in 2005, although the batsman quickly proved his worth and was the catalyst behind the Ashes victory. He would have happily played more county cricket had it not been for Fletcher’s strictures.

Then there was Vaughan, out of action with a knee injury for almost a year. He found Fletcher much changed when he returned to the team in January. He was nothing like as positive or dynamic; he was grumpy and plainly under pressure.

During the World Cup, Vaughan began subtly to distance himself from his coach. Even on the eve of the Australia match he was offering only qualified support. “The grass isn’t always greener [but] if there’s someone out there that they [the ECB] think is better, bring him in.” After the team had been booed off following defeat to South Africa, he used a similar phrase, but with an important refinement. “The grass isn’t always greener, but sometimes it is.”

“We all know it is time for a change,” Vaughan said of Fletcher on Friday. “Eight years is a long time [for a coach]. He needs a fresh start. Sometimes a change of voice might be just what the team needs.” Vaughan also showed that he was in tune with the board’s thinking on overhauling strategy. “The most important thing is to get English cricket back on track,” he said a few days ago. “We need a strategy to move forward. Since 1992 we haven’t produced any good one-day cricket. We need to know why.”

Vaughan conceded that his place in the one-day side was in grave danger, but he was plainly confident of resuming as Test captain, even though his last Test match was 16 months ago.

When Morgan announced Fletcher’s departure, he also confirmed that Vaughan would be captain for the start of the Test series against West Indies next month. Vaughan’s card had clearly been marked.

Nor was there to be any waiting for the Schofield review’s findings on whether the new coach should be a selector. This had become a thorny issue during Fletcher’s last months in office as his writ ran large on the make-up of the team, but clearly it was not the principle that was regarded as the problem, merely the man.

There was a poignant moment as England finished practice at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown on Friday morning. Fletcher sat alone on the dressing room balcony looking out wistfully over the playing field and seemingly reluctant to tear himself away. Then Maynard came out, slapped him on the back and said: “Come on, old fella, time to go.”

Another former official was less sympathetic. “He’s got his million pounds, a British passport and an OBE. He’s done well, hasn’t he?”

Explore Cricket

• Counties

• Live Scores