Why England could do with Wright and Pietersen in their World T20 mix

May 2010: The Eurozone and IMF agree a deal to bail out the Greek economy. Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust sells in New York for $106.5m, a world record for a work of art. The X Factor semi-finalist Diana Vickers reaches No. 1 on the UK charts. Oh, and England win the ICC World T20 final, their first and to date only international tournament victory.

It seems both a long time ago and like yesterday, that heady charge across the field in Bridgetown after Paul Collingwood bunted the winning runs off Shane Watson. And as you might expect, the fates have been mixed for the XI that played that day. Collingwood and Ryan Sidebottom ended their international careers on their own terms. Michael Yardy left the England team a year later with clinical depression. Graeme Swann's elbow yielded to the weight of cricket. Craig Kieswetter lost his career to a serious eye injury after a delivery from David Willey pierced the grille of his helmet. The noble Bressie Lad, also nagged at by injury, labours on for Yorkshire but perhaps will not for England again. Eoin Morgan will captain the World Cup side in India, and Stuart Broad has Alastair Cook's blessing to appear, although he hasn't played a T20I since March 2014.

Which leaves three men who remain gainfully employed by franchises across the world; three men who appear unlikely to be selected for the forthcoming World T20 squad but who deserve at least some level of consideration: Michael Lumb, Luke Wright and Kevin Pietersen.

At 35, Lumb is probably the easiest to dismiss, and yet his contribution to the development of T20 cricket in England should not be underestimated. When Andy Flower made the last-gasp pairing of Lumb and Kieswetter for the 2010 tournament, he set the team on a new path. The two were fearless. For the first time, England accepted risk into their hearts. This was fresh and radical and it cut against the national psyche - it took another half a decade and an abysmally anachronistic showing at the 50-over World Cup for the mentality of the one-day side to fall into line.

Lumb, like Pietersen, has been a long-standing advocate of the benefits of franchise cricket, another paradigm shift that England are currently coming to terms with. How they will benefit from Adil Rashid's stellar tournament for Adelaide Strikers in this year's Big Bash.

But how they might benefit from giving deeper consideration to the experience that Wright and Pietersen possess too. Wright, a sunny batsman whose game has rounded out impressively these past few years, has quietly assembled a CV of note: he is now the ninth-highest run scorer in the T20 format, the top Englishman on that list, and his six hundreds are a tally bettered by just two men - Brendon McCullum and Chris Gayle. The most recent of those hundreds was made in front of 80,000 people at the MCG. Wright understands both the format and the stage it commands.

And as for Kevin… It's almost wearying to type the words, but perhaps we should just couch this brief and hypothetical debate in purely cricketing terms. On such terms, what would he bring? What can he offer? As he has pointed out, England are a young and potentially brilliant team, dark horses for the World T20. What players like Jason Roy, Sam Billings, Rashid, Reece Topley, David Willey et al lack - to varying degrees - is experience in India, and the kind of deep-set knowledge that comes from having been in every situation that the game can throw up. Pietersen has both, and they would feed through any team he was in or around.

Since his 355 at The Oval last summer he has been in rare touch, apparently refreshed rather than blunted by the stop-start nature of a freelance career. His returns in the Ram Slam and the Big Bash have been high-value, as has his less tangible contribution. He is one of cricket's biggest stars and he knows how to wield that power, on the field and off. In Australia he has been both avuncular and compelling when mic-ed up on the field, and as a commentator on the Australia-India ODI. What is impressive is not just his knowledge of and awareness of the game but how quickly he assesses a situation and how easily he articulates his thoughts. He is intimately acquainted with winning matches. And in a format where most of the star batsmen are either openers or finishers, he is a genuine No. 3, adaptable to any scenario. It's hard to think of any opponent who would be pleased or comforted by his inclusion to play against them.

It's utopian I know, but Wright and Pietersen deserve to have their names mentioned when selection is convened, because the point of selection is to offer the best chance of winning. Even to have them around the squad would give some terrific young cricketers every chance of going deep into the tournament, and of understanding more about the game and themselves.