Consistency

In his comment below this post, Rob argued that the naming of the England squad in Saturday's papers - a story that proved entirely and unsurprisingly accurate - was spin rather than leak. At first I disagreed, and then, after Geoff Miller did his rounds of the radio and TV studios on sunday morning, I began to see his point.

A leak reveals the news, spin accents the parts of it that the spinner wants you to talk about. In making sure that the story was about Trott, Bopara, Key and Ramprakash, Miller was barely challenged on the most extraordinary decision of all - to bat Ian Bell at number three.

You could drive a truck through the stats. Bell has batted three times in this series, scoring 53 [during which he was out three times], 8 and 3 for an average of 21.33; in his last nine Tests his average has dropped from 44.28 to 39.84; he averages 24.60 against Australia; he averages 18.08 against Australia in England; he averages 31 batting at three; has never scored a hundred batting at three; has never scored a hundred without another England player also passing a hundred in the same innings; he made 0 and 0 against Australia at the Oval in the decisive Test of 2005.

'We don't have a concern,' said Miller, loftily, a statement that must put him in a rather exclusive minority. 'We don't pick players who we have a concern about. I'm confident he has got the technique and ability to do a job there'. 

At least they can claim consistency: they consistently pick Ian Bell. 

NB: I have a strange vision of the future in which Bell becomes a kind of new century Ramprakash; eventually discarded by England and playing on and on in county cricket with a beautiful technique and a deal of comfort, opinion of him softening to a rosy glow...

  

The Taunton Paradox

We've done Fermat's Last Theorem. We still face the Goldbach Conjecture. And now comes the Taunton Paradox, a mathematical problem that has been bedeviling statisticians globally every spring for some years now.

It's expressible thus: 172IRB =80MPV if 1=? 

Or, as that true man of Somerset Vic Marks put it in the Observer today, 'In the currency of the day, an 80 from Vaughan against Durham is probably the equivalent of Bell's 172 at Taunton, where April runs are as much a part of spring as primroses in the hedgerows'.

While Vaughan's '80' against Durham remains purely theoretical, Bell's 172 must be contextualised by James Hildreth's 303*, Craig Kieswetter's 150*, Wawickshire's 500 and 108-1 and Somerset's 672-4 - and by the fact that it is against the physical laws of the universe not to score runs at Taunton. 

So how much is one run worth there? Over to you, stattos. It's all too much for the England selectors, who need another week to mull over the first squad of the year. 

That Taunton Paradox. It'll get you every time. 

We need to talk about Kevin

How do teams form? Do they simply coalesce around the available talent, or are they planned, built, developed, evolved by men who understand the forces that shape them?

It would be nice to think that a selector would know, but James Whitaker didn't seem to during an uninspiring radio interview with Jonathan Agnew. 

The side playing in Barbados is a fly 'em in and patch 'em up effort, but by luck, some pieces seem to fit. The ennui radiating from Bell and Harmison has gone, as has the strange tension that attaches itself to Andrew Flintoff. A team moving towards a top six of Strauss, Cook, Pietersen, Shah, Bopara and Prior, with a bowling all-rounder at seven has a nice, dynamic feel.

It is contingent on Pietersen accepting the burden of his luminous gift and moving to number three. Great men bat there, and the career arcs of great men suggest they enter their prime at 4000+ test match runs. 

Shah is an oddity, a glorious one, and deserves the chance that Bell got lower down, with Bopara in the pup's position. England should have huge ambition for Prior, who can really bat, and can open up the team for five bowlers. 

It will take a man Pietersen respects to tell him he must move up. James Whitaker and Geoff Miller are not that man. Strauss and a new coach might be. Someone must; Pietersen's talent demands it.