The Surfer

Normally I would not be one for desperate changes for the last match of a series such as this but I cannot see any other solution to the paucity of runs in the upper order. Without them England are hamstrung so I would have to make two adjustments. Given that Warwickshire’s Jonathan Trott is the next cab on the rank, he has to make his debut and bat at four (he proved his form by scoring 79 against Somerset yesterday), while I would love to see Robert Key back in the number three slot. I like the way he plays and believe he would respond well to the chance to play a part, even if there might be a feeling that it could be a one-off situation.

English cricketers are witheringly described as “lazy”, “shallow” and “flat”, and as players who “love being comfortable”. Fast bowler James Anderson can be “a bit of a pussy” if things do not go his way and skipper Andrew Strauss can be too “conservative”. And there are barbs at the egos of Matt Prior and Graeme Swann, as well as the annoying strut of Ravi Bopara.

Anyone with a decent knowledge of the game can draw up a few foolscap pages of plans to dismiss batsmen and unsettle opponents but unless the author is accountable for the end result, they’re mostly window dressing. A captain has to make the decision who to bowl and where to place the field, and if all goes astray, as it did for Andrew Strauss at Headingley, he better be able to change tack quickly and inspire confidence in his team.

Without their larger than life superstars Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen, England has looked less than mortal in the fourth Test at Headingley. Very similar in fact to the performance of the side that was flogged 5-0 in Australia a few years ago, when Flintoff was there as captain and Pietersen the best performed England batsman.

Happily Australia had been able to choose a strong side. Seldom have team announce-ments been as eagerly awaited. From the Australian viewpoint, attention focused on Clarke's stint in the nets, Haddin's work with the gloves and the sight of Clark limbering up.

Large numbers of people, at present rendered docile and pliable by alcohol, would be obliged to endure a day’s cricket, with its inevitable longeurs and periods where next to nothing is happening, while stony-faced sober. And then they might really get up to some mischief.

Usually when the board gets its hands dirty there’s either money or power involved. In this case there are no millions to be made, but certainly there’s power to be lost.

There is little doubt that drug testing has to be mandatory in cricket. Every good system must create an atmosphere for the clean to thrive and the weeds to be uprooted. And there are both in our sport as there will be even among priests and kindergarten teachers. Sometimes you don’t just have to be clean, you have to be demonstrably clean and that is a small price to pay in the effort to cleanse a sport.

Nobody likes to be stopped in the middle of the road and for no apparent reason, but given the widespread instances of terror-related crime, everybody has learnt to adapt to this inconvenience.

Jonathon Trott is the fourth South African to appear this summer - an extraordinary statistic calculated to give coaches, educators and even pseudo-intellectuals pause for thought. Success has many fathers but the facts suggest that Trott's emergence was due in no small part to his background.

Meanwhile, Ryan Sidebottom's return shows that cricketing families can survive even the weakest systems.

Some games under this system might finish in what some would deem an unsatisfactory way but there are plenty of Test matches at present that are totally unsatisfactory - witness the recent Barbados Test in which bat dominated ball and a draw was clearly the only possible result from a very early stage. As a spectacle it was a travesty but under this plan batsmen-friendly pitches might still produce exciting games.

“What the commentators, cricketers I much admire, have been saying about swing is plain wrong,” he [Rabindra Mehta, a NASA scientist] told The Times yesterday. “They’ve been talking about the clouds, how the new ball won’t swing until the lacquer has come off, and it’s just rubbish.”