Stewart: Moores could be the fall guy

Alec Stewart believes there will be only one winner if the current England cricket captain Kevin Pietersen and the coach Peter Moores cannot reconcile their differences. While Stewart is backing the former to come out on top former teammate Mark Butcher - another former national captain - cannot envisage any good coming from the feud. This is a pivotal week in the future of English cricket as the bosses at Lord's attempt to handle a crisis they would much rather have kept private. Talks have been ongoing for the past few days but it is anticipated that face-to-face meetings, after Pietersen comes back from holiday on Thursday, will hasten a conclusion to the saga. "You don't want to see two people in power positions at loggerheads and it appears that is how it is," said Stewart. "In cricket it is slightly different to other sports; this wouldn't happen in football. "Could you imagine at Manchester United, a player or captain saying he doesn't want Alex Ferguson as manager? Well, the manager would just get rid of him, whereas in cricket the captain generally is the boss. "He will strike up a working relationship with the coach or manager - they will have an arrangement whereby the coach will run things on training days and then the captain takes over. "But it appears they are at extremes in this case and whether it is going to be solved, I don't know. "I hope it is because they are both very good individuals. "But if the relationship can't be solved I believe there will only be one winner and that's the captain, Kevin Pietersen." England head to the Caribbean in a fortnight, so time is of the essence and Butcher warns the aftermath of whatever happens between now and then could be problematic. "If KP [Pietersen] gets his way and Moores is removed, then the spotlight is going to be very much on KP," Butcher told BBC London 94.9. "Whoever comes out on top, it then puts them under enormous pressure. "Should Moores stay and things go okay, does KP's position then become slightly undermined? Or does KP get the new guy in, everything looks terrific, he is then vindicated and therefore grows stronger?" Butcher knows how it feels to not get your own way as England captain - in his only Test match at the helm back in 1999, against New Zealand at Old Trafford, he asked for all-rounder Craig White to be called up to balance his XI only to be ignored. This current fall-out is much more serious and deep-rooted, however, with players within the England camp understood to be concerned at some selection issues last summer - Darren Pattinson's call-up for the Headingley Test a prime example. "I'd heard through the grapevine there was a bit of an issue between Kevin, Peter and some of the other players in the side," said Butcher. "Obviously not being on the inside you can't tell what the issues are. "The Michael Vaughan thing has been used as the baton for it but I doubt that that's the main cause. "I think it's something far more underlying and something that has been going back for a lot longer than Michael Vaughan's non-inclusion on the West Indies tour. "One camp would say 'it is best we sort it out before we get to the Ashes' and the other camp would say 'can't we hold on until after the Ashes?' But if you wait until the horse has bolted it'll be too late." *PA Sport