Cricket: Australian rules dictate pragmatic approach: Gooch and Gatting likely to get benefit of doubt as England selectors meet today to pick Ashes tour party

THE FIRST thing England's cricket selectors should do when they sit down today to pick this winter's squad to tour Australia is to pin five pictures to the wall. A moustachioed, pot-bellied, zinc- nosed fast bowler snarling out directions to the pavilion, a close-up of Steve Waugh's mouth making another comfortable defence of his world sledging title, and Allan Border holding the Ashes urn in 1989, 1991 and 1993.

Once this has been done, England should have less trouble focussing on what this winter is all about before the squad is announced tomorrow. It has nothing whatsoever to do with long-term planning, and who may or may not be opening the batting against New Zealand in 1999. This is a one-off engagement against the most ancient of all England's cricketing foes, an enemy which has become so insufferably smug that retribution is long overdue.

Hang the future. If Bloggs is the best man for the job, whether he has only just started shaving is as irrelevant as whether he will shortly be trading in his sponsored car for a half-price bus pass. England must make sure he is out there on the field when the first whiff of cordite permeates the nostrils in Brisbane on 25 November.

Australia is for men who will not flinch in a bush fire, not an outing for boy scouts, and it is only the kind of aggression sparked off by Darren Gough and Phillip DeFreitas at The Oval, and carried on by Devon Malcolm, which will bring back the Ashes. These are three names which can be inked onto Raymond Illingworth's jotter before any serious discussion even begins.

The others are Michael Atherton, Alec Stewart, Graeme Hick, Graham Thorpe, Steve Rhodes, and Philip Tufnell, and in a squad of 16 (anything larger guarantees someone returning with an honours degree in thumb twiddling) this leaves seven places - three batsmen, two seamers, one spinner, and one all-rounder - to be filled.

Two of the batting places are likely to go to Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting. They might be 41 and 37, but both keep themselves remarkably fit. Gooch will be jogging twice around Melbourne before breakfast, assuming that there is any breakfast left for him after Gatting has left the table, while Gatting's concession to his awesome calorie intake is to burn it off on the squash court and in the gym.

Gatting is the more risky pick, in that he has not scored serious runs for England since 1987, but he has had a prolific summer, and although there is some evidence that Gooch's eyesight is not as sharp as it was, there is still no more awesome plunderer of Test-match attacks when the mood is upon him. The final batting place is more complex. Robin Smith will be seriously discussed, but Smith did not perform on the last tour to Australia, and he will probably only be picked if the selectors consider that Shane Warne might go on such a celebratory bender that he will not be fit to play again until March.

Ideally, England would like a second left-hander along with Graham Thorpe, but equally, there is no point in having one just for the sake of it. Darren Bicknell is a possibility, but with three opening batsmen already in Atherton, Gooch and Stewart, Bicknell would be an unnecessary complication.

Which probably leaves us with John Crawley. He does have a few technical deficiencies to iron out, and some view India as the more ideal ironing board, as the A team vice-captain under Alan Wells. However, he does have the class to be a genuine competitor for a Test place, and not to vanish without trace, as has happened on previous Ashes tours to the likes of James Whitaker and John Morris.

The two additional pace bowlers should be Angus Fraser and Joey Benjamin. Fraser's bodywork may flirt with an MOT certificate these days, but the engine is a strong as ever, and his fierce competitive streak - he doesn't care much for any batsman, never mind Australians - is an essential quality on this tour.

Benjamin, at 33, also comes into the category of picking people for a specific mission rather than potential long service, and he would also be a strong candidate for a Test place in Brisbane and Perth, where the ball will swing. It might also swing in Melbourne, where, like the weather, no one can predict what the pitch will do from one session to another.

Sydney, on the other hand, is a slow turner, the one venue likely to demand two specialist spinners. Shaun Udal may be slight favourite to be chosen along with Tufnell, but Peter Such gives it a bigger tweak, and to take Udal would be an indication that England - whatever their public denials - have at least half an eye on the glut of one-dayers in mid-tour.

Finally, the all-rounder's spot, which is a case of perming one of three from Craig White, Dominic Cork and Chris Lewis. White, assuming he has recovered from his shin splint problem, and Cork are fierce competitors, and White has plenty of experience of Australia. Lewis is the most talented of the three, but nowhere is his versatility more pronounced than in the area of the doctor's note, and if England want to pick him for such a high- pressure tour, then, on all previous evidence, more fool them.

My own 16 would be: Atherton (capt), Stewart, Gooch, Gatting, Hick, Thorpe, Crawley, Cork, Rhodes, DeFreitas, Benjamin, Gough, Fraser, Malcolm, Tufnell, Such.