Who are ya?

Now we’re all for a bit of novelty as our occasional penchant for uni-cycling, fire-juggling, lady strippers attests, but England selectors, this morning you really are having the proverbial giraffe.

Darren who? Oh Pattinson…. a Grimsby born roofing artisan from Melbourne who’s played 11 first-class matches for Notts and was originally scheduled to take his progeny to Alton Towers today.

Okay he’s got a decent average and has been taking wickets by the hatful, but this has to be the most left field selection since Sharon Osbourne fronted up that one-off Girls Aloud gig when Cheryl Cole had a dodgy tum*.

Now we’ve had some unlikely names creep into the England reckoning over the years, Joey Benjamin, Martin McCague and Gavin Hamilton ub the debit ledger and even Marcus Trescothick was plucked out of obscurity before he went onto became England’s Banger and a mainstay of the side.

But Pattinson? That is truly and remarkably unusual and how will it make the queue of bowling worthies like Simon Jones, Chris Tremlett, Matthew Hoggard, and even Steve Harmison feel?

Duncan Fletcher used to get take stick for sticking by his guns, but this is a case of not so much as next cab off the rank, but as summoning the next cab from the outer orbit of Uranus.

He’ll probably take 40-7 now.

*This might have been a strange, unusual and fairly disturbing dream or we may just have made it up…