Tufnell's name is now firmly in The Frame

Last weekend was not the best time to be a cricket fan. The Benson & Hedges Cup Final marks the middle of the season and it was hardly high noon. An occasion that exists only in order to provide excitement succumbed to the prevailing mood of the Test series against India - a curious flatness. Even the ICC meeting, which usually supplies a few sparks, ended in a no-result.

Three days later, things are looking up. We have a riveting contest between England and Pakistan to follow, and that's just the court case. The Test series, starting at Lord's a week tomorrow, promises almost as much. Pakistan are more gifted than England but more volatile. They have a unique ability to be very good (drawing a series in the West Indies in the days when everybody else used to lose) and very bad (losing a Test in Zimbabwe). At William Hill, you can get odds of 5-2 on Pakistan to win at Lord's, an offer which looks too good to refuse.

Though you might want to see whom England pick before parting with your money. Mike Atherton gave an interview to the Sunday Times last week and said two very interesting things. The first was that he now trusts his fellow selectors so much that he would be prepared to do things the Australian way and not be one of them. "I would be happy not turning up at the meetings," Atherton said, "because I know the selections would be the right ones." This may be the greatest statement of faith ever made in any England selection panel. Coming a month after Raymond Illingworth put Atherton in a tricky position by revealing some of his doubts about individual players, it is, if nothing else, highly generous.

The second concerned an individual Atherton was thought to have doubts about. "I have never had problems with individuals," he said. "Only this week Geoff Boycott said on TV that Phil Tufnell is not in the side because I don't want him. But I have never spoken out at selection meetings against a player for anything other than cricketing reasons. If we pick awkward people, it's up to me to handle them. Part of the game is to have 11 characters within the team."

This struck me as astute, broad-minded and magnanimous - the sort of quote the average sportsman comes out with about once in a career. But it struck one of my colleagues as disingenuous. He, along with a few other cricket writers, had gained the distinct impression 18 months ago that Atherton was so fed up with Tufnell in Australia that he didn't want to have to deal with him again, at least on tour.

And Tufnell hasn't played for England since. He was in the squad for the sixth Test against the West Indies last summer but not in the final XI. "We've had a lot of problems with Tufnell over the years," Illingworth said, with his usual reckless candour. "If he came in and did well, we could put ourselves in an invidious position. If we weren't going to take him on tour, it didn't make sense to play him in England."

Or, as Peter Hayter of the Mail on Sunday helpfully translated: "We couldn't risk playing Tufnell in case he won the match, and forced us to pick him again."

Now, following Min Patel's tidy but anodyne showing against the Indians (57 overs, one wicket), Tufnell is being touted again. In Monday's Daily Express, John Emburey - a man respected throughout in the game, and the one Illingworth wanted as England coach - said that Tufnell should be considered seriously for the series against Pakistan. Well, he would, wouldn't he, you may say, after all those years of wheeling away in tandem for Middlesex. But over the years Emburey has been one of Tufnell's sternest critics.

Emburey says Tufnell has changed. It had "done him the world of good" having to take on the role of senior spinner at Middlesex when Emburey himself left. "He's 30 now, married and more at ease with himself."

In short, Emburey was saying that Tufnell had matured. This is a word with magical powers in selection committees. Why it should be so is not clear. Perhaps it's a subconscious attempt to make up for the fact that playing a game all day long is not a very grown-up thing to do.

With the next Test taking place on his home ground, Tufnell's name is now firmly in that mysterious place they call The Frame. You could argue that he hasn't set the County Championship alight this year, but he seems to have bowled consistently well in a struggling side. You could point out that his Test record is modest (68 wickets at 39), but so are those of all the world's finger spinners: in the age of Warne, they tend to be used as stock bowlers. In the absence of Angus Fraser, Tufnell is the best man we have to tie up an end. (Or even in the presence of Angus Fraser in Barbados two years ago, England's famous victory owed much to both of them.)

The trouble with Tufnell is that the character issue - his fecklessness, his fag-smoking, his magnificent surliness - can be turned into an objection on cricket grounds. A middling team needs bowlers who can bat or field. Tufnell is reported to have improved in both departments, but he is hardly going to pad up as night-watchman, as Patel did at Edgbaston, or take a blinding catch at short leg, as Patel did at Trent Bridge. Then again, I never thought I'd see him described as being at ease with himself.

Tim de Lisle is editor of 'Wisden Cricket Monthly'.