On the decline in the quality of writing I think it's the structural context that's important. It's not that the quality of writers have gone down, it's the opportunity that writers now have. With TV and one-dayers dominating the game so dramatically and comprehensively, writers of today do not have the opportunity to exercise their skill and imagination they may have had 30 years ago. On TV you see minute replays from 46 different angles, that's the viewer you're writing for. Since the viewer has seen everything, what you're focusing on is some kind of absurd, irrelevant, non-cricketing detail.
TV encourages frivolity and gossip rather than focusing on cricket and the cricketers.
One-day cricket is to my mind equally damaging. The recent series versus Australia shows that there is much more poetry and drama in Test cricket. You could write a great essay on the Kolkata Test. But if you take the 1983 World Cup final, there's not a single piece that has stood the test of time. That's not the fault of the writers, it's the fault of that wretched game.