Time right for Michael Vaughan to earn his corn

He is often at his best on flat pitches, where his constant fiddling and manoeuvring of the field works to his advantage. Rightly, he doesn't like to sit back and let things drift but in bowler-friendly conditions it pays not to over-complicate things. Accordingly, it was strange to see Ryan Sidebottom bowling without a short-leg to Wasim Jaffer at the start.

In one particular school match, he [Wasim Jaffer] played a rash stroke and was slapped by his brother. He responded with a quadruple hundred in the second innings, showing the signs of the steely focus that earned him a debut against the South Africans in 2000. A languid strokemaker who is especially fluent through the covers and midwicket, Jaffer is often accused by critics of being too laid-back. His teammates, though, would tell you otherwise, and many in Mumbai still talk of the day when he went out and made a century just hours after his mother had died.

Donald can offer the personal chemistry that was Troy Cooley's hallmark, some of the technical expertise of Kevin Shine and something that neither of his predecessors had, the experience and authority that comes from having done it at the highest level.