CRICKET WORLD CUP:JADE DERNBACH is a right-arm bowler, for those who have never heard of England's shock World Cup call up, but it was the tattoo on his left arm that carried an appropriate message ahead of Saturday's quarter-final against Sri Lanka.

“What counts is not the years in your life but the life in your years,” it reads. England, who must feel a good deal older than when they began this tournament, could do worse than adopt the motto forthwith.

England have had the most haphazard of World Cup campaigns, but even taking that into account the talk that Dernbach, 25, might make his senior international debut against Sri Lanka takes some believing.

If you are obsessed with a fellow’s birthplace, Dernbach might attract attention as the Johannesburg-born the latest in the interminable line of South African-born players to represent England.

Or you might trust in the cricketing possibility that Dernbach, of fastish medium pace, will unveil a collection of ingenious slower balls that Sri Lanka will have never seen before, footage of Surrey Twenty20 matches and England academy games in the West Indies not being universally available.

Chris Adams, Surrey’s cricket manager, bills Dernbach’s slower ball as “a very special variance, dynamite and unusual, an exceptional disguise, an X-factor delivery”.

Adams praises Dernbach as “an exceptional individual who will run through brick walls for his team”, but it is his ability to mix up deliveries that won him a call-up ahead of Warwickshire’s Chris Woakes when Ajmal Shahzad withdrew from the squad with a hamstring injury.

“There has been a lot of talk about the slower ball and it has worked well for me,” he said, hours before joining his England team-mates for practice under the Premadasa lights.

Dernbach took up cricket seriously when his family moved to England when he was 14 and made his debut for Surrey only three years later, against India A in 2003 – he was Surrey’s youngest debutant for 30 years. He also made his Twenty20 debut for Surrey against Lancashire in a semi-final at The Oval and although he suffered at the hands of Andrew Symonds and Andrew Flintoff, five years have brought gathering maturity.