British is best

The selectors spent five hours last Friday in picking the squad for the fifth and final Test - that is three players an hour - and when the party was announced this morning I wondered what they found to talk about.

Unless they are less clever than I think, it cannot, for instance, have taken them all that time to be sure they wanted grandchild-of-the-famous-over-the-clock Trott Jonathon to play at the Oval and Ravi Bopara to stay at home. Trott nearly played at Headingley; Bopara averages 15 in four Ashes Tests. What's to argue about?

Well, you can tell me if you wish, that Trott is not head-to-tail British, although he sounds as if Surrey is his natural home rather than Pretoria. I doubt if Geoff Miller and Co. had many concerns about that issue.

I do, actually. I was brought up in a cricket sense in Yorkshire where everyone of the players - with 29 exceptions in a century, most of those arguable - was as Yorkshire as Ilkley Moor and they won for that reason. Today we might call it commonality, then we just noted they all talked - whenever they felt it necessary - like Geoff Boycott, came from the Bradford or Yorkshire Leagues and were probably related in some distant way.

Once when I was 16 I and my feeble off breaks were looked over by a former Yorkshire player at the school nets. Don't even ask why. "Where were you born?" he asked. "Birmingham, sir," I said, knowing this was the wrong answer. "YOU can't play for Yorkshire," he grumbled and then took no notice when I pulled off the most spectacular caught and bowled. "Can't play for Yorkshire," I heard him mutter to the games master.

So, it is not surprising that I am in favour of all England players having a claim by birth or parentage to be British and I still feel as if I had suddenly discovered I must be left-handed every time a Trott or a KP but not an Andrew Strauss emerges.

I just wish the selectors would not go down this route, even though I want England to beat Australia, even though I have loved Robin Smith's square cut, and been friends with any number of Caribbean-born players and had no objection when one was chosen at a time.

When the team is over-populated by men born in Zambia, Australia, the RSA and the West Indies, I wondered if we will ever be at the top of the world rankings.

I also sometimes think that the sporting gods prefer Australia to be the giants of the game rather than us simply because they rarely pick a man who is not a fair dinkum Aussie.