In what might already be known as the Summer of Youth after the exuberant performances of Michael Owen and Justin Rose, England's cricketers are set to give their own kid his head in the fourth Test.
Andrew Flintoff, the 20-year-old Lancastrian with the build and power of a rugby forward, will have gone to bed last night knowing that he may make his Test debut today if the selectors decide that, with his occasional medium pace, three seam bowlers augmented by Ian Salisbury's leg-spin will be enough to bowl out South Africa twice to secure a match England must win.
The decision will be made this morning after an assessment of the Trent Bridge pitch and the weather. The surface was hidden yesterday but, according to the England captain Alec Stewart, it had "a fair covering of grass". As the off-spinner Robert Croft, wicketless in the series, has already been packed off to rejoin Glamorgan, the choice will come down to two of Angus Fraser, Alan Mullally and Flintoff.
England have paid heavily for poor batting performances in the first innings of the last two Tests, suffering the ignominy of following on both at Lord's, where they lost heavily, and at Old Trafford, where they wriggled off the hook. One way to ensure that this does not happen again is to bowl the opposition out.
But for now it appears that Flintoff will occupy the number seven position giving, it is hoped, a security blanket to the top order rather than sending negative messages. With Salisbury certain to be the sole front-line spinner, it is probable Mullally will be omitted with Fraser, rendered impotent by the Old Trafford pitch, still regarded both as talisman and insurance policy against the extravagances of the other bowlers.
Flintoff came into the squad apparently as a direct all-round replacement for Ben Hollioake, who was chosen for both Lord's and Old Trafford only to be omitted on each occasion. But, according to the chairman of selectors David Graveney, a bowler has been exchanged for a batsman.
"Ben has heaps of talent," said Stewart yesterday, "and he has been bowling well. But without batting badly he has been getting out cheaply." Another excursion and another omission, it was felt, would be counter-productive.
With Flintoff, Stewart will be getting a confident, powerful batsman who hits the ball straight off the front foot, brutally hard, but is quick on to the back foot as well. What he will not be getting is the hostile fast bowler that the teenage Flintoff was. A back injury put paid to that and he has been little more than medium pace during his infrequent spells for Lancashire.
In effect, then, England would be attempting to win the game with four bowlers, a policy that can work well if there is help in the pitch - in which circumstances the extra batsman is a bonus - but a policy, too, which can come unstuck.
It will, however, give more support to the middle-order batsmen Mark Ramprakash and, for the first time in two years, Graeme Hick.
This is the ground on which Hick was goaded into scoring a century by the then supremo Raymond Illingworth against West Indies in 1995. The hope is that the memory of that, and of scoring in dismissive fashion against Allan Donald and the fledgling Shaun Pollock during the washed out Test at Centurion in November the same year, will rejuvenate a Test career of under-achievement. Batting him at number six, where he can filter back into the system, will help.
To win, though, the bowlers, Dominic Cork in particular, must rediscover the movement and zest shown in the first two matches. Cork performed wonderfully on his return to Test cricket with 11 wickets in the first two matches, only to hit the buffers, along with Fraser, in the third.
England (from): Atherton, Butcher, Hussain, Stewart (captain), Ramprakash, Hick, Flintoff, Cork, Salisbury, Gough, Fraser, Mullally. SOUTH AFRICA (probable): Kirsten, Liebenberg, Kallis, Cullinan, Cronje (captain), Rhodes, Pollock, Boucher, Donald, Adams, Ntini.
