Date-stamped : 05 Aug94 - 14:30 "Talking Cricket"- by Scyld Berry The odds are that the head which wears the helmet of England's No 3 batsman at Headingley will be unhappy. Number three, it may be recalled, is the black hole of the England side into which many a candidate has disappeared over the last seven years. Since the Second Test at Lord's in 1987, in 70 matches, England's No 3 has scored three hundreds. One of them was Alec Stewart (113* against Sri Lanka in 1991), coming between those two pals, David Gower (157* against India in 1990) and Graham Gooch (210 against New Zealand earlier this summer). In this same period England's open- ing batsmen have scored 28 Test centuries, while England's No 4 batsman has hit 10 centuries. In theory and practice your best batsman should be at three. Perhaps until England can find a Da- vid Boon, they might as well bat with 10 men. Even making 30 has been beyond England's No 3 since Graeme Hick did so at the Oval last August, aside from Gooch's double hundred. Graham Thorpe, Mark Ramprakash, Gooch against New Zealand, and John Crawley against South Africa have all had a turn. (From The Daily Telegraph) Contributed by Vicky (VIGNESWA@*umass.edu)