One is tall, awkward and grumpy. The other is short, cheerful and smiley. Together they are always testing and often deadly. The new-ball partnership between Andy Caddick and Darren Gough is England's best since Ian Botham and Bob Willis 20 years ago, and has been one of the cornerstones of their revival under Duncan Fletcher and Nasser Hussain - in fact Fletcher, in 25 Tests as England's coach, has never gone into a match without them. But he is going to have to now. Gough opted to miss the Indian tour towards the end of a chastening English summer, and now Caddick has followed suit for reasons of personal safety and his young family. The next Test, at Mohali on December 3, will be the first they have both missed since the Lord's Test against South Africa in 1998, when the new ball was taken by Dean Headley and Angus Fraser.

A look at the stats for those 25 Tests, from the Wanderers two years ago to the end of the Ashes 2001, shows just what England will be missing out on.

Gough and Caddick have been responsible for 57% of the wickets taken by England bowlers (190 out of 331) and the majority of the five-fors (8 out of 14), but have bowled less than half the overs (1646.4 out of 3626.1).

Gough has 103 wickets, Caddick 87, while the best of the rest is Craig White, way behind with 27 wickets. Gough and Caddick's joint tally of 190 wickets have come at an average of 27.87. The other 25 bowlers, 16 of them specialists, have managed only 141 wickets at 41.13 (see table, below). That's 13 extra runs per wicket, or 132 per completed innings.

Gough and Caddick have taken a wicket every 52 balls, or 8.4 overs. The others have taken a wicket every 82 balls, or 13.4 overs - an extra five overs per wicket, or an extra 50 overs per completed innings.

Gough and Caddick have a further edge on their various team-mates. They are much more likely to make multiple incisions, to cause collapses. Under Fletcher, they have dismissed batsmen in single figures on 91 occasions (48% of their wickets). The rest have managed only 50 such dismissals (35%). Caddick and Gough have also dismissed 34 batsmen (18%) for ducks; the rest have managed only 12 (9%). Hoggard and Ormond have a hard double-act to follow.

England's wicket-takers during the last 25 Tests

	m	wkts	ave
Darren Gough	25	103	26.31
Andy Caddick	25	87	29.72
Craig White	13	27	34.67
Dominic Cork	7	26	20.35
Ashley Giles	7	25	33.08
Robert Croft	6	13	34.23
Ed Giddins	3	8	20.13
Alan Mullally	3	7	31.57
Alex Tudor	2	7	27.86
Chris Silverwood	4	7	49.14
Phil Tufnell	4	7	86.71
Andrew Flintoff	7	6	45.50
Mark Butcher	10	6	17.33
Matthew Hoggard	2	6	36.83
Usman Afzaal	3	1	49.00
Graeme Hick	11	1	50.00
Marcus Trescothick	16	1	52.00
Chris Adams	5	1	59.00
Jimmy Ormond	1	1	115.00
Ian Salisbury	3	1	193.00

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