The need for five bowlers, the lack of a Test-class all-rounder, the presence of a stand-by opener in Nick Knight and the pressure to gamble to level the series, all pointed towards this choice.
Chris Lewis is lucky to be chosen ahead of Darren Gough. If he does play, it should be as a strike bowler, as at Lord's. He is a mood player. Taking the new ball away from him at Headingley, and giving it to Alan Mullally in- stead, was bound to sap his confidence.
Unlike Dominic Cork, whose Botham-like reaction to any imagined slight is to try even harder, Lewis is inclined to sulk.
Tempting though it would be to have spinners at both ends of the England attack, I don't see it happening this time. It would mean going into a five-day match with only three seamers and knowing that injury to any one of them could lose the series.
Given the injury records of Lewis and Andrew Cad- dick - and Cork's tendency to hurl himself against the nearest boundary wall - that would be too hairy a risk.
THE MCC have called a special general meeting at Lord's next week to discuss the crisis over the new grand- stand, following the Sports Council's rejection of their #4.9 million bid for National Lottery funding.
Surprisingly, perhaps, the club fail to report to their members one of the reasons why the application was turned down: their ban on women members. Not a word on this sensitive subject appears in the brochure for the meeting.
Nonetheless, I expect some members to raise it. What they will be told, I expect, is what I was told by the MCC secretary, Roger Knight: ``These are two separate issues - the grandstand and women's membership. We will not trade #4.9 million for women's membership.''
They will also be told that women's membership is part of the remit of a special inquiry, under Charles Ro- bins, into all aspects of membership. This group will report to the general purposes committee, who then forward their views to the main MCC committee. Proposals will be made to the annual general meeting next May.
I hope, first, that the Robins committee will take the question of women's membership seriously and re- ceive proposals from members. I hope, also, that the committee will give some leadership, rather than relying, as last time, on the backwoodsmen mentality of armchair postal voters to allow them to shelve the problem again.
Whether women are simply admitted to general membership, which I favour, or whether a special category is created for distinguished women cricketers, something clearly has to be done to change the MCC's chauvinistic image.
If the problem is money to provide new facilities in the pavilion (behind which, I see, a number of diehards are sheltering), I have a solution. Call the Sports Council's bluff and get the National Lottery to fund the work.
SURREY have no fewer than four batsmen - Graham Thorpe, Mark Butcher, Alec Stewart and Adam Hollioake - in the top five of the Whyte & Mackay rankings, split only by Gra- ham Gooch at No 2. Has any county shown such dominance be- fore? They also have a bowler, Martin Bicknell, at No 4, and Chris Lewis in the England team.
Surely, on these figures, they ought to win some- thing this season. For those of us brought up in the 1950s in the days of May, Bedser, Laker and Lock, what depths of nostalgia would be evoked if that were to happen.
THE golden influx of overseas footballers prompts me to revive an idea I proposed last season of a star- studded challenge match between England and the pick of non-English players in the Premier League.
Leaving the selection of the England team to Glenn Hoddle, here's my provisional choice for their opponents: Peter Schmeichel, Philippe Albert, Denis Irwin, Roy Keane, Colin Hendry, Ruud Gullit, Dennis Bergkamp, Ryan Giggs, Eric Cantona, Fabrizio Ravanelli, David Ginola.
The team are a bit exposed at the back and leave out attackers of the class of Juninho, Faustino Asprilla, Jordi Cruyff, Gianluca Vialli, Tony Yeboah, Duncan Fer- guson and Andrei Kanchelskis, not to mention the demoted Georgi Kinkladze.
But it would make a stunning television spectacu- lar, as well as providing invaluable practice for England's World Cup campaign.