Given Graeme Hick's ability to bowl respectable off-breaks, England just might be on the right lines with four swing bowlers and a sole specialist spinner, but let us consider the case for a change to an attack with proper balance: three fast bowlers, two slow. The point to grasp is that a brace of spinners can win Tests where one cannot, especially on the true pitches on which four fast bowlers so often fail to deliver.
The exception to the rule may well come at the Oval next month. Advance information tells me that it will be a quick wicket there again this year. Headingley, too, is not the place where spinners have often thrived in recent times. It is, however, too glibly expressed wherever you go that the Pakistanis, like the Indians, play spin brilliantly. So brilliantly that they lost 2-1 to Sri Lanka in Pakistan a little under a year ago with Sri Lanka's off-spinners taking 19 wickets in the two games Sri Lanka won. So brilliantly that Ashley Giles and Neil Smith, the classic English combination of slow left-arm orthodox and off-spin, did more than anyone to bowl Warwickshire to success against this Pakistan team only last Thursday.
It is said, too, that Lord's is not a place where Tests are won by spin bowlers: the ball does not turn enough. Strange, therefore, that Middlesex should have won championships in 1990 and 1993 and come third, fourth, fifth and second from 1992-95 with significant contributions each time from John Emburey and Phil Tufnell. Strange that Bob Holland should have taken five for 68 to bowl Australia to victory there in 1986, and Shane Warne and Tim May 15 wickets between them in the innings victory when the Australians last played a Lord's Test three years ago.
The West Indians changed everyone's thinking because of the success of their four fast bowler policy from the late 1970s on.
England have come to think of the idea of playing two spinners as extraordinary. When Hick has been given anything like a decent bowl, it has seldom been as a partner to the specialist spinner, more as the alternative. Emburey and Tufnell did bowl in a four-man attack at Edgbaston on a dry turner three years ago (taking more wickets than the seamers but fewer than Warne and May) but you have to go back to Edmonds and Emburey for the last England 'spin twins' and they played together all too seldom.
The West Indians changed everyone's thinking because of the success of their four fast bowler policy from the late 1970s on. Trying to emulate, other countries, and the West Indies themselves, came to think of spinners as stock bowlers who offer a change of pace and a quicker over-rate, but no more. Occasionally there are pitches and conditions when more than three seamers are required. Of course, too, it is questionable whether county cricket since the full covering of pitches has encouraged the production of spinners of true Test quality. But the serious search for a combination which could work together (I believe, for example, that Peter Such and Tufnell could have done so if only they had not been picked in isolation) has been non-existent.
If Ray Illingworth has sufficient energy left, he should fight this corner with conviction for what remains of his tenure as chairman of selectors: three matches. Sadly, he has been as guilty as any of his recent predecessors of failing to make proper use of spin, partly to accommodate Mike Atherton, whose inclination has been the apparent safety-first policy of playing six batsmen, three seamers and one spinner.
We all know that a three-seamer/two spinner balance would have been more easily found if there had been a genuine allrounder post Botham, whether the bowling skill of that man was fast or slow. If Mark Ealham could develop into a genuine third seamer rather than a fourth, the shift to a properly balanced attack might become possible. At least this week the threat of another punitive fine for inadequate over-rates, which England thoroughly deserved at Lord's against India, ought to be avoided.
He was a cricketer of almost infinite resourcefulness, immense self-belief and a flair for the biggest occasions, especially one-day finals at Lord's.
WARWICKSHIRE'S lucrative success against Pakistan's less-thanbest XI recalls the sad coincidence of Dermot Reeve's retirement the same day. He has been a genuine character, on and off the field, in an era supposed to be short of them. He tells the story against himself of Imran Khan congratulating him on achieving so much ``considering you have so little ability''.
He had plenty, of course. He was a cricketer of almost infinite resourcefulness, immense self-belief and a flair for the biggest occasions, especially one-day finals at Lord's.
That we have seen the last of Reeve, the Warwickshire captain, is rotten luck for him and bad luck for the county. That we shall hear much more of Reeve the former Warwickshire captain is guaranteed.
PART of his future may be to help coach young cricketers. Certainly he would approve of two sponsorships which have been introduced this season with more whimper than bang. The Rover car company have put in #75,000, matched by a similar amount from the Government, to underpin the National Cricket Association's campaign to train more coaches.
The money is used both for teaching the basics of the game to primary school teachers and for coaching awards to those wanting to help young cricketers at a more sophisticated level. The objective is to provide coaching award courses at every teacher training establishment in the country.
Last week there was further good news for the game's future when the BT Top Sport Cricket programme was launched at the Oval. Up to two million children at 10,000 primary schools and cricket clubs will be introduced to the scheme over the next two years.