Jack Bannister ponders Angus Fraser's comments on England's future.
The two proverbial non-mixers are oil and water and chalk and cheese. Now add a third: press laptop and committee room, following Angus Fraser's leaked quotations from his contribution to Ken Schofield's seven-man committee set up to examine the Ashes fiasco.
Fraser is said to have told the committee, which is due to report early in May: "The current England management is tired and stale and there is no sense of fun about the England squad as they go about their work."
Even more damning was this comment: "The coach maintains he has the respect of the players, but the late drinking session in St Lucia did him no favours, and the incident suggests that his claim for respect is not as high as he thinks.
"Those of us who have followed the squad closely this winter have seen the life sucked out of them."
And then the final punch line: "England could still win the World Cup, but the events of the next fortnight should not prevent the England & Wales Cricket Board looking for a new coach after the World Cup.
"Duncan Fletcher is the finest leader England have had, but it's time for a change."
Those are all valid views as expressed by a full-time cricket correspondent for a national newspaper, but no sport can accommodate a famous ex-player with a foot in both camps, holding a dual role of writer and administrator.
The roles are incompatible, which is why former England captain Michael Atherton turned down an invitation to join Schofield. Nasser Hussain should have done the same but didn't and everything Nick Knight offers on camera for Sky Sports has to be considered accordingly.
The dangers are twofold. Does the player go the Fraser way and thus run the risk of pre-empting the contents of the final report or, as often happens, does he bend over backwards to be kind to former colleagues and thus not do an honest job for his media employers?
England have been criticised in the past for not taking advantage of the nous of former cricketers such as Geoffrey Boycott and Ian Botham, who have both had peripheral involvement in recent years, only for the authorities to drop them for understandable reasons.
The official view was that their media commitments might reveal more than Lord's wanted and the price of employing them full-time was impractical because of the large sums of monies involved.
Yet Fraser has jumped ship. That is not to say that the Schofield report will suggest that Fletcher must go and the ECB will have an easy get-out should England progress further in the World Cup.
That would be the worst of all worlds, because two or three one-day wins in the next few days cannot paper over cracks which have widened so unacceptably in the past two or three years.
Fraser played under Fletcher and undoubtedly has the ear of the current players and is well suited to spotting a decline in the spirit the coach instilled on and off the field in his first four or five years in office.
As recently expressed in this column, things have deteriorated to an alarming degree in the last 18 months, as a result of unfortunate injuries — almost all of which were mis-diagnosed by expensively employed medical staff — and the clumsy handling of the captaincy role for the tour of Australia.
Add in the suffocating presence of families and friends for eight weeks in Australia instead of half the time, plus the system of England players' central contracts which is badly in need of overhaul, both to reverse the growth of player power and to allow certain players to play more for their county sides than Fletcher wants.
Again, this column has expressed reservations about the coach and the power he has been allowed to develop, but it also acknowledges the many good things he has accomplished in raising England to the second-best Test playing country from the second-worst.
That is why he should not be replaced before the First Test match at Lord's against the West Indies in just over a month's time.
It would be unfair on his successor — probably Academy chief Peter Moores, who once kept wicket at Worcestershire — and such a kneejerk reaction would be inappropriate.
Instead, let Dennis Amiss and his International Team Management committee give him a tighter brief and restrict his powers by meeting more often for his explanation of decisions taken and his reasons.
As for Fraser: "Deal or No Deal?" Back to the ultimate unmixables, oil and water, chalk and cheese, and press laptop and committee room.
Definitely No Deal.
