Because English cricket “going so well” is based only on the last two Tests, against a substandard Pakistani side.

Here to back me up is Tim de Lisle in the Sunday Times today: “I don’t think we should get too excited about beating Pakistan, who have played quite bizarrely. The way they produced one of the great partnerships of all time and nothing else, the way they kept running themselves out, it all harked back to the days when the whiff of match-fixing was in the air. Their bowling has been so accommodating that it is hard to say whether Alastair Cook has really arrived at Test level yet; he certainly won’t be giving Warne sleepless nights yet.”

So many positions from the captaincy on down, are up for grabs. A lot of talented players but a pretty unstable side, with players’ form varying wildly from series to series and match to match.

Contrast to last June/July when all the selectors had to do was choose two from Thorpe, Bell and Pietersen. The rest of the side was as stable as can be.

What’s going well for England cricket is that, less than a year after the Ashes winners got beaten by Pakistan, and when it’s England and not Pakistan that have since been ravaged by injuries (no disrespect to Shoaib Akhtar, whom I hope to see playing at the 1st ODI), it’s the Pakistan side that Tim de Lisle can dismiss as substandard. Maybe they were substandard because of crappy hotels: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/060812/139/66mk5.html

As for why the confusion about who should play and in what role? Ankle surgery is one obvious reason. Strauss has done well as captain, and his health seems to be solid (and at less risk than others because he doesn’t bowl). With Freddie, he was a pretty good captain (though with a tendency to overbowl himself), but will he be fully recovered for the start of the Ashes? There’s a risk that Freddie’s ankle could become like Vaughan’s knee and drag on the captaincy controversy into the 2009 Ashes. There’s something to be said to sticking to a decision about the captaincy rather than wavering according to the circumstances, but clearly it was a premature decision to award the captaincy to Flintoff.

Another “problem” is too many good top-order batsmen. If Flintoff can bat but not bowl, it’s questionable whether any batsman should be dropped to give him a place. No one has dared to say this, but it might be better to rest Freddie for a test if it means he can bowl in the next one rather than drop Cook or Bell (and don’t even think about dropping Collingwood if Freddie can’t bowl, though he might be the likely one to drop if Freddie’s ankle is 100% solid).

As for the bowlers, apart from the pleasant surprise that is Monty, there are some holes. The ideal bowling attack would be Flintoff, Panesar, Harmison, Hoggard and Jones. If one of the quicks can’t bowl, then you substitute Mahmoud. But who is next in line after that? Plunkett? Anderson? Lewis? Collingwood? I think England will bring strong top-order batting to Australia. I hope they bring enough bowling firepower to take all the wickets they need.

Kathy - hats off for your honesty on the De Lisle quote - I’m not a Torygraph reader so wouldn’t have called you out on it!

Agree there’s questions to be answered before 23/11, but in nearly all the areas where questions remain, there are alternative positive answers rather than a ‘lesser of two evils’ solution.

Jones or Read?
Which six batsmen out of a possible eight or nine?
Gilo or Monty?
Captain… Flintoff or Strauss?

I imagine that Bowman’s 11 would be the popular choice, and it is a very competitve line-up, a little brittle in the bowling dept, and green in the batting dept.
Australia have their worries too, age, an unsettled middle order a third seamer.

The whole thing is just so bloody exciting, is England ready to assume the mantle of no1 test playing nation?, can Australia hang on for an emotional swan song on home turf?. Or will the world blow up before a ball is bowled?

Kathy, i hope your right, however if the apocalypse does come, could it come just prior to the tri-angular one day series.

I don’t want to sound sanctimonious, but is it proper to sanctify a sikh?

That’s right Kathy, with a little Italian blood, but i don’t mention that on Cricket blogs.

I couldn’t agree more, Michael. And it’s not just the team’s performance, it’s individual players. A few weeks ago we were being treated to full page treatises on what a liability Monty was in the field, and now he’s God. In the words of John Travolta, when asked about the pastings and the praise he has received in his up and down career, he said: “I was never that good and I was never that bad.”