Re: Joyce

A quiz question: who is the only player to have scored a one-day hundred for England against Australia who has not played a Test?

We'll come back to that in a moment, but first, some applause to the selectors for agreeing with my last post and sticking with their original judgement that Jonathan Trott is the batsman most deserving a chance. Presumably this was a decision based on rational assessment of his capabilities, such as averaging over 90 this season in Div 1 of the championship, although since two of the last three debutants were Swann and Onions, one cannot entirely avoid the suspicion that having a name which makes for good punning headlines is now the primary qualification for selection. (Actually, come to think of it, perhaps “Amjad Khan't” counts as well.)

Like Australia's casualty Phil Hughes, Ravi Bopara is too young and too talented a player not to get another chance in the fulness of time, but his failure to establish himself gives Ian Bell his third shot at convincing people that he should be England's No. 3.

A Bell century is a thing of beauty full of fluency, timing and elan, which is why he has many admirers (including me), but it is also the problem with him. Substantial Test batsmen also make ugly hundreds, prising out runs when the team is in trouble and the bowling implacable, and Bell has never gritted such an innings out. That is why it is a little unfair to brand him this generation's Mark Ramprakash: one thing Ramps quite often did for England was run out of partners as he uncharacteristically blocked and nurdled for 47*. Bell is far more aptly termed this generation's Graeme Hick, who scored several Test centuries and for most of his Test career had figures at least comparable to his England peers but who never quite gave the impression that he belonged at the highest level while clearly outclassing everyone else in the county game.

Bell has been out too horribly too often for me to have much further patience with him. Mike Selvey has been labelling him mentally flabby for some months now, and unless he can correct that impression at The Oval, I'd be in favour of junking him entirely.

But if you are going to recommend dropping someone, you have to have a candidate to take over. That brings us back to the quiz question, to which the answer is Ed Joyce, now of Sussex. In the recent round of championship matches, Bell got a hundred after his team-mate Trott had reached the mark first. Such is Bell's way. In the previous round, Joyce came in at three for Sussex and was ninth man out, scoring 183 out of 308 while everyone else failed. Such is Joyce's way.

Slightly to my surprise, for he is not anyone's image of a successful hit-and-giggle merchant, Joyce has been this season's most prolific run-scorer in the medium-length forms of the game, topping the table in both the 50-over Friends Provident and the Pro40. But his 94 against Somerset was on TV last night, and he batted the way he does in first-class cricket, as an anchor around whom the big hitters can bat - though in this case, he stood firm but the others didn't and Sussex lost.

Whereas a Cook or Collingwood trades in singles and a Pietersen or Flintoff in boundaries, Joyce deals in twos. He plays later than the nurdlers, guiding his shots into the gaps between fielders, relying more on precision and timing than on power. He has very pleasant attacking shots – his whipped off-drives are reminiscent of Brian Lara and some of his cutting has the deftness of David Gower – but he deploys them judiciously rather than using them to storm barricades. His substantial innings are memorable less for their brilliant shotmaking than their solid effect: he is the kind of player who reaches 40 before you realise he's there. On an international continuum, he is a little to the Rahul Dravid side of Hashim Amla.

His first-class average may not be all that special, but neither were Michael Vaughan's or Marcus Trescothick's when they were picked: they had the ability but also the character to play Test cricket, and character is what the current England middle order (oh, all right, Bell and Bopara) apparently lack and Joyce seems to possess.

I have no quarrel with the selectors for picking Trott, but his selection creates a vacancy for the heir-apparent: my contention is that Joyce was the baby thrown out with Duncan Fletcher's bathwater and deserves serious reconsideration. He even offers possibilities for headline writers.