The Middlesex left-arm spinner has been in the party for each of the first three Tests but has yet to take the field for a side which has so far altered only once, when Dean Headley replaced Devon Malcolm in Manchester. His very satisfactory start, with match figures of eight for 176, compared favourably with the performances of Darren Gough and Andrew Caddick, but, assuming the fitness of all three, and unless the Headingley pitch is drier than normal, the chances are that the same 11 will be asked to try to hit back at the triumphant Australians.

Malcolm is one of five additional players asked to join the official 12 on the evening of Sunday July 20 for ``a private get-together/seminar'' and to give the team extra preparation for what has become, with the series level, the pivotal game of the summer. The others are Ashley Cowan, the Hollioake brothers, Adam and Ben, and Mike Smith, the Gloucestershire swing bowler who came close to inclusion in the final 11 at Old Trafford. These five will return to their counties for championship matches starting the day before the Test.

Speculation over the captaincy was rightly removed by the original appointment of Mike Atherton for the whole season and by the same criteria this decisive announcement has rendered all press speculation about the Headingley team futile. Darren Gough can rest his sore shins, whether or not he plays for Yorkshire today, and the others can pace themselves over the next 10 days for a game which England surely have to win if they are to regain the Ashes.

The contentious matter of catches taken close to the ground will be discussed again by Atherton and Mark Taylor when they and the other seven Test captains meet at Lord's this Friday. Theirs will be an advisory meeting on various important topical matters, also including the general efficacy of the link between Test umpires and referees.

The captains will have their say a day before the International Cricket Council's new cricket committee meet to discuss these and other pressing matters. The captains' views will be taken into consideration on all of them, including South Africa's suggestion that floodlights may be used for Test cricket during daylight hours when bad light would otherwise prevent play. Unlike any suggestion of Test being played at night under lights - quite a different idea and not yet seriously proposed - this seems to me to be plain commonsense, although not many grounds have suitable lights.

The possibility of using television replays to determine whether or not a fair catch has been made was raised again by Nasser Hussain's catching of Greg Blewett in Australia's second innings in the Old Trafford Test last Saturday. From some angles the ball appeared to have bounced a fraction before Hussain's fingers knocked it upwards. Had a television replay been requested by the umpires, whose doubt was evident from the subsequent consultation between messrs Sharp and Venkat, the third umpire would surely have felt obliged to give the batsman the benefit of the doubt.

The only replays shown of Ian Healy's second-innings catching of Mark Ealham also appeared to suggest that the glove was not fully underneath the ball. Ealham was obviously in two minds about whether the catch had carried but chose in the end to walk, which solved any problem the umpires might have had. The advantage of expanding the use of third umpires for decisions other than ``line decisions'' - i.e. run-outs, stumpings and boundary disputes - would be that justice would be seen to be done. The snag, obviously, is that once umpires are able to consult on catches too, the game would be delayed frequently.

Such is the frequency of bat/pad appeals, few of them easy for umpires to judge instantly, they would forever be consulting their colleague in front of the television monitor. In many cases replays would not prove the appeal either way, no matter how many cameras were used. Furthermore, if it becomes the convention to use replays for catches in big matches, how long before the cry goes up that camera evidence should be used for lbw decisions too?

Already close-up television coverage has altered many aspects of the game. The replays have certainly proved that many hundreds of batsmen in the game's long history have been given not out when they ought to have been judged run out, albeit by the merest of inches. The simple convention once was that the umpire's decision was both final and to be accepted without dispute; what is more, the good and bad decisions usually evened out over a player's career. But none of us is untouched by technology.