The Right Stuff...

It’s Monday and while the days slowly tick down to our summer hols, we were heartily cheered by Lewis Hamilton’s win at Hockenheim yesterday.

Okay it’s just over half way to go in the championship now, but the MP4-23s are starting to look seriously quick (well Lewis's one anyway)and Hamilton was absolutely serene yesterday. Even the team’s rather naive tactical blunder in not pulling him in when the safety car was deployed, just gave Lewis a chance to show what a driver he is passing Massa and Picquet in supreme style.

But if Lewis has got the right stuff, quite clearly the England cricket team haven’t. The talent is there, but the selectors are failing to give Michael Vaughan the right side to lead into battle. Against South Africa selection has been appalling: Ambrose shouldn’t bat a six and arguably shouldn’t be in the side at all. His gloveworks fine, but he’s never going to average 30+ in test. It’s got to be Prior for our money.

The selection of Mark Pattinson is all kinds of wrong. Nothing against him personally but his bowling’s been innocuous and to leapfrog him above squad players like Chris Tremlett, Simon Jones, and even Steve Harmison is so foolish to the point of ridiculousness. We can’t even pick the good Australians.

At around 80mph and edging towards 30 he’s never going to be a long term prospect. Surely they can’t have picked him so he’ll slot right out when Ryan Sidebottom’s fit again?

At 130-4 on Monday lunchtime, England are not so much staring down the barrel as having it rammed into their collective eyeball.

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…