Time for Tim

Just in case you - or the selectors, but what do they know? - are looking for a promising young fast bowler who can bat take a look at Tim Bresnan who might easily fill in when the going gets tough late in the summer.

You will remember our failures. Straight off the top of my head I can name Plunkett, Kabir Ali, Jon Lewis, Pattinson, Sajid Mahmood, Kirtley, Amjad Khan and now, so it seems, Hoggard and possibly Harmison who are filed as Pacemen Unwanted. I bet you can think of a dozen more.

Bresnan appears to come into that category after five one-day-internationals but each time he begins a new season - and he is still only 24 - he has taken a stride forward.

That's all. Just watch the lad. He bowled about as well as Hoggard for Yorkshire against Durham this week, only Adil Rashid took more wickets for the county last summer and he also helped Jason Gillespie put on 246 for the ninth wicket against Surrey by scoring one of his three first class hundreds.

Before you say "I could hit a hundred off Surrey" let me add that he also made 124 not out for England A against the Indians in 2007.

As they say at Headingley "this lad has a bit about him" but it is time he proved it with some startling figures. He has been promising far too long and between now and the end of the Ashes series he must put himself in the spotlight. Only 122 days to go, Tim.