Sunday, April 7, 2002 This week England announce the 12 players who will be offered central contracts for the summer. These contracts are now widely recognised as a good thing, even by Disgusted of Taunton. There are just three problems. There shouldn't be 12 of them, they shouldn't be announced this week, and they shouldn't be for just the summer.

Twelve is the number the counties grudgingly agreed to when the system came in two years ago. It was soon shown to be a nonsense as it led the selectors to pick a team rather than a squad. In that first XII was Chris Schofield of Lancashire, a novice legspinner who played two Tests and took no wickets. Not in the XII was Graham Thorpe, because he had dared to take a break after 10 successive winters away. England's triumphant comeback against West Indies that year owed a lot to Dominic Cork and Marcus Trescothick, who weren't under contract either. In 2001, England's best batting against Australia came from two players who hadn't even come close to winning contracts - Mark Butcher and Mark Ramprakash.

This year Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher pressed for an increase to 15 contracted players. It was hardly an outrageous request given that Australia have 25. It would have allowed them to knit young players into the fabric of the squad, as you can on tour, and it would have enabled them to rest their few stars, which will be essential if England are to get through a year consisting of Test series against Sri Lanka and India, an Ashes tour and a World Cup, plus a mini World Cup and two triangular tournaments. All too predictably, the request was turned down.

The management also wanted year-round contracts. These should clearly be offered to the core of the team - Hussain, Trescothick, Thorpe, Gough and Caddick, with a strong case, for fitness reasons, for Giles, Flintoff and Hoggard too. But again the ECB said no.

If there have to be only 12 contracts, they shouldn't all be announced this early. As Hussain argues, the selectors are effectively being told to pick their team for the Lord's Test against Sri Lanka on May 16. Within days of returning exhausted from an arduous winter, or even before, Hussain and Fletcher have had to make two awkward choices.

One is between Mark Ramprakash, a troubled soul again following the death of two friends, and Ian Bell, the most promising teenager in the country. The other is between James Foster, a beginner who had a very mixed tour, and Alec Stewart, a veteran who is unmistakably a better wicketkeeper and batsman at this moment, but old enough to be Foster's father. Foster may have batted with flair and feistiness in the Tests, but he isn't in the top six in England as a keeper, never mind the top one.

The selectors' best move would be to announce a XII that couldn't make a team. Then they could include both Stewart and Foster, and get the two working together, as master and apprentice, rather than passing like ships in the night. They might even play in the same team, especially if there is a spate of injuries like last summer's: Michael Vaughan has hardly nailed down the place as a specialist opening batsman in which Stewart averages 47. And they might leave out both Ramprakash - who cannot be written off as he remains, alongside Thorpe, England's best batsman against Australia - and Bell, who hardly needs a contract at this stage of his career. Which of the two plays at Lord's, or whether both do and Vaughan doesn't, can be decided after assessing their form and Ramprakash's frame of mind.

This would be my XII, in batting order: Trescothick, Stewart (possible wk), Butcher, Thorpe, Hussain, Vaughan, Flintoff, Foster (wk), Giles, Gough, Caddick and Hoggard.

The selectors, and the system, are more likely to produce something like this: Trescothick, Vaughan, Butcher, Hussain, Thorpe, Bell, Flintoff, Foster (wk), Giles, Gough, Caddick and Hoggard.

Tim de Lisle is editor of Wisden.com and of The Best: The 40 Leading Cricketers in the World Today, a mini-book published with Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2002.

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