Wednesday, November 6, 2001 The lowest of the low? Try 1989. It was the year England started playing Let's Lose The Ashes. But it was also the year they started playing Let's Pick Anything On Two Legs. Thirty different cricketers pulled on the three lions that summer: that's 90 lions, 29 Test cricketers who barely managed a roar between them, plus Steve Rhodes in the one-dayers. Most sentient observers agreed this must never happen again.

Instead a decade of dithering ensued, during which England made an average of 4.7 changes from the end of one Test series to the start of another. The lesson was taking a while to sink in. Then, Eureka! Duncan Fletcher took a squad of apparent no-hopers to the subcontinent, used just 13 players in six Tests, and came away with two series wins. At last, we all thought, and looked forward to the summer.

Six months later, things have gone from 1989-bad to 2001-shocking. Since the start of the two-Test series against Pakistan last May, England have fielded 34 different players in 18 international matches - or a shade over 38 days' actual cricket. Throw in Richard Johnson, Richard Dawson, Warren Hegg and Martyn Ball, who haven't played yet but are all in the squad for India, and the total rises to 38. History suddenly risks casting Ted Dexter - horoscopes, smog, Malcolm Devon and all - in a less loony light.

What has gone wrong? England might argue that they deliberately spent the one-day series in Zimbabwe experimenting. But that five-match series added only five new names to our 2001 list. In any case, if you take them away, the figure is still 29 players in 13 games, which is even more thickly spread than 34 in 18.

The counsel for the defence might argue that the bursting-at-the-seams Ashes squad was bloated, sorry, blighted by injury. Actually, of the 15 changes made to the Test team between the second Test against Pakistan and the end of the Ashes, only five can be put down to injury - and one of those was the mysterious case of Alex Tudor. England have reverted to their indecisive worst, inviting everyone to the party and indulging in a game of musical chairs. Swiftly followed by sleeping lions.

But it gets stranger still. The selectorial parlour games have resulted in a fairly settled and perfectly presentable top six: Trescothick, Butcher, Hussain, Thorpe, Ramprakash and Vaughan. It's the bowling that has had more incarnations than a Buddhist with an identity crisis. In the past six months, Cork, Caddick, Gough, Sidebottom, Hoggard, Ben Hollioake, Ealham, Mullally, Collingwood, Croft, White, Giles, Tudor, Ormond, Tufnell, Flintoff, Snape, Kirtley and Silverwood (a total of 19 players) have all been picked either solely or partly for their bowling. Then there's Johnson, Dawson and Ball …

In 1999-2000 England sent an experimental side to South Africa, and emerged with some credit but more of an idea about the make-up of their best team. Now the longtermism that underpinned that tour is in danger of being forgotten. Come on, Duncan. You stopped the rot once. Now you've got to do it again.

Lawrence Booth is assistant editor of Wisden.com. His English Angle appears every Wednesday.

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