Trip down memory lane for Emburey

FOURTH TEST: A revised England bowling attack could hold the key to victory at Old Trafford

MARTIN JOHNSON

Cricket Correspondent

Less than three weeks ago, John Emburey was asked in a radio interview whether he thought that his recall to the Test team would be a good thing for English cricket. "No," he said, with his customary engaging frankness, and after the passing of one of cricket's legends last week, we will never know how close Harold Larwood might have come to getting a game this summer.

If you had been asked back in May to name England's team for the fourth Test match starting at Old Trafford today, you would have received some decidedly curious looks had you come even close. In the world of English cricket, brave new dawns have a tendency to plunge back below the horizon slightly faster than it takes Emburey to bowl an over.

After England's fourth consecutive Ashes drubbing last winter, Michael Atherton said: "This tour has proved that we have to invest more in younger players. There is no other way to go." Well, there was another way to go, and England arrived at the fork in the road and unerringly took the signpost marked Memory Lane. Tally ho, up and at 'em lads, and pass the embalming fluid. For captain Atherton, read Captain Mainwaring.

However, let's be right about this. England need a spinner for this Test match, and despite the fact that Emburey is rising 43 years of age, the best tunes in the slow-bowling repertoire this summer are being played on this old fiddle.

It is also a fact that any grandiose plans England might have had for planning for the future have been affected by a dire injury list, and they need to win here (or at least not lose) in order to remain in the series. This is not a time for rose-tinted glasses, and if it requires recalling a player who grew up when people wore monocles, so be it. At least England have a clear focus for this game, which is not always something that can be said about them.

With no Alec Stewart, England have balanced the side (at least on paper) with Craig White at No 6, and not only do they have an opening partner for Atherton who is neither not used to the position, nor worrying about keeping wicket as well, but they have also selected a forward gear rather than reverse.

Nick Knight today becomes England's 25th opening batsman since the Gooch- Boycott liaison ended in 1982, since when there have been 39 different opening pairings in 139 Tests. England have now gone 15 Tests without a three-figure opening stand, and talking of centuries, no individual batsman has yet made one in the series.

The final batting place rests between Graeme Hick and the recalled John Crawley, and if the selectors are true to form, they will go for Hick. They scarcely ever do anything else, and their faith is as blind as the eyes-closed hook shot Hick has been playing against the West Indian pace attack.

Hick will always be a batsman to be feared on front-foot pitches against bowling that could barely remove the skin from a rice pudding, but against this lot (average 23.72 in 22 innings) he is more a batsman to fear for. Although Emburey is a clear case of a selection for a specific mission, there is no logic if Hick plays here. Hick has impressive credentials in many areas, but where the West Indies are concerned, it is the equivalent of interviewing applicants for a job piloting aeroplanes and giving it to a bloke with an HGV licence.

The pitch, as might be expected, is as parched as England's recent Test record here - no victory since 1981 - and it is almost odds-on that England will go into this game with only two front-line pace bowlers. It is also doubtful, despite passing a fitness test yesterday, whether Darren Gough will be one of them.

Gough would not have survived this far if the selectors had been paying more attention to form than reputation, and the only way of outdoing Edgbaston on the cock-up scale would be to select Gough as one of only two new-ball bowlers and watch him being taken off on a stretcher at 10 past 11.

Angus Fraser and Dominic Cork to take the new ball, with White first change and Emburey and Mike Watkinson sharing off-spin duties is the most likely bowling line-up, and it is not entirely beyond the realms of fantasy that the West Indies will pick their leg-spinner, Rajindra Dhanraj.

Emburey was a member of England's last winning Test team at Old Trafford, and at 43 is the oldest player in the side since Brian Close took on the West Indies at the age of 45 in 1976. The last time he bowled for England in Test cricket, the customary chaos in Bombay High Street reached new levels when Navjot Singh Sidhu kept launching cricket balls in among the bullock carts and motor rickshaws.

Emburey is a phlegmatic character, but if the West Indies want to unnerve him, Carl Hooper and Sherwin Campbell will walk out to bat wearing turbans.

England (from): M A Atherton (capt), N V Knight, J P Crawley, G A Hick, G P Thorpe, R A Smith, C White, M Watkinson, R C Russell (wkt), D G Cork, J E Emburey, D Gough, A R C Fraser.

West Indies (from): C L Hooper, S L Campbell, B C Lara, J C Adams, R B Richardson (capt), K L T Arthurton, J R Murray (wkt), I R Bishop, K C G Benjamin, C A Walsh, C E L Ambrose, R Dhanraj.