Trescothick can provide the template for Hales to open up

It's not just that May in England is too early for serious cricket watching, it's that it's far too early, uncivilised really. All right I grant you there may be the odd early cricket riser who's been up since April, probably awoken by some unholy racket coming from India but that's hardly a worthy reference point is it??

If there are still vestiges of cherry blossom on the trees, football and rugby on the back pages and  Eurovision jingles in our heads, then it's too soon. It still seems like pre-season. My visual constitution is simply not ready to digest anything more taxing than a couple of championship entrees, a few bites of limited overs stuff and a maybe an ODI snack. (I yearn to be magically transported back into that wondrous twilight zone that was the Benson and Hedges Cup group stage. This, I will acknowledge, is probably just me though.)

Nevertheless the first repast of the Test summer will be served up this morning at Headingley, a ground admittedly more dog's dinner than royal banquet. Ridiculous "point system" aside, there is much to play for particularly for two of England's top three, Alex Hales and Nick Compton neither of whom is close to offering convincing proof that they are right persons for their positions.

Compton's issues have been discussed at great length without anyone really identifying what the problem is. Too intense? Not chummy enough? Lackadaisical in the field? An unfitting face? Apparently he's changed, relaxed, mellowed. And yet the doubts remain. Long term he seems unlikely to keep his place. In the short term, however, a remedy is available: runs, lots of them.

Hales' difficulties may be easier to qualify but more difficult to solve. He suffers from a similar problem to that which afflicted another one-day expert Jos Buttler: the inability to know whether to stick or to twist. Should he just play his natural attacking game or allow it to be tempered by the conditions, the quality of bowlers and the match situation? Ask five people and you would get five different answers. Graeme Fowler, the former England opener, referred to a similar dilemma as the  "England Player Syndrome" whereby a player comes into the Test side having scored a bucket of runs in county cricket. He then immediately goes about changing the way he plays, the method that got him selected in the first place, in order to bat as he thinks a Test player should. Self-evidently it is a recipe for disaster.

Adaptation, as Darwin has shown, is the very essence of a survival strategy. At the same time the role of a Test match opener has changed (or been adapted) as well. Opening bowlers must earn respect where once it was all but given. Even thirty years ago the mere sight of Test match opening bowler with a new cherry was enough to ensure a degree of deference. Not any more.  Players like Michael Slater and more recently David Warner, Virender Sehwag and Chris Gayle have redefined the job description.

Not all of these dashers make good models for Hales to follow. Gayle and Sehwag "see ball - hit ball" approach is based on enormous talent, but also aided by largely benign pitches and the prevalence of the batsman friendly Kookaburra ball.  Unsurprisingly neither has enjoyed great success in England.

Warner's approach is a better one. His lightening progression from T20 specialist to Test opener without having played a single first class match was not a simply an inspired selectorial hunch. They saw that his powerful striking had its roots in a sound technique and a decent sense for the location of his off stump. His weakness, such as it is, lies in the field of "shot selection" - lofting the spinner with a man placed back, manufacturing pull shots off good length balls. A Test average of 50 suggests there are worse faults.

By far the best model for Hales is the man England have been trying to replace for almost ten years, Marcus Trescothick. Known for his pulverising cover drives and brutal slog sweeps, he was far from the traditional English Test opening batsman in the manner of Boycott, Atherton or Cook. He was, and remains, the most statuesque of openers - not through being tall and elegant but because his feet always seem cast in stone. The simple technique worked though as did the equally simple approach of playing the ball on its merit. If it was a half volley it got spanked, whether it was the first ball of the innings or the last ball of the day. Once 'in' he also latched on to the anything with width, scything it through gully and point. But when high quality bowlers put the squeeze on in helpful conditions he also had the discipline, temperament and patience to stick it out.  None more so than on his Test debut against the West Indies at Old Trafford in 1995, where he went an hour without scoring, doggedly seeing off a typically testing spell from the parsimonious duo of Ambrose and Walsh. He ended up making 66, scoring more freely from the less challenging fare offered by Franklyn Rose and Mervyn Dillon.

So far Hales' has failed to show that he is the man to fill Trescothick's boots. It really doesn't seem to be a technique thing, in fact he looks a lot more solid than he did a couple of years ago when those in-duckers were causing him such problems. And yet in South Africa he fell to a succession of heavy handed but indeterminate pushes outside off stump.  There are those who would suggest the fault was in his half-heartedness. Neither one thing or the other. If you going to flash.. etc. Well it's a theory and may indeed be a good approach for someone like Ben Stokes, but for an opener more discriminating judgement is required.

 I have my doubts as to whether Hales has what it takes to make these improvements but nevertheless he remains a gamble worth taking for this Sri Lankan series. For the rewards of a fast start, as Trescothick and now Warner have showed, can be rich and long lasting.

Second Test Preview: Stumbling Sri Lanka v An unbalanced England

I can't help but agree with Nasser Hussain. It pains me to say it because his default method of point making - hammering away over and over again like a demented woodpecker - leaves me firstly reaching for the paracetamol and secondly, decidly illdisposed to his arguments. However, his observation, that the Sri Lankans were simply not mentally up to the demands of five days of Test cricket (even when about half that time had been spent watching the rain come down) seemed undeniable in view of Monday's ingnominous collapse.

The Sri Lankans themselves seem to have admitted as much. To be fair the situation they found themselves in on Monday is one of the toughest in Test cricket. Going out to bat without anything really to play for requires the strongest mental discipline. With no victory to seek or rearguard to fight, the intoxicting power of adrenaline is in short supply. A team primed on and for high octane limited overs games, came out flat as chapatis and were then further reduced to mere crepes following a superb spell from Chris Tremlett.

Tremlett's stock has risen to the point where he will lead England's attack in Jimmy Anderson's absence. The question of who should replace the Lancastrian at Lords tomorrow has provoked some strange thinking in my view. Prior to the second innings collapse, the general view was that a like for like replacement was required rather than the Tremlett/Broadesque Steven Finn. However, an excellent spell from Tremlett where he mixed up the odd short ball with those on a fuller length and lifters from Broad at the tail seem somehow to have changed the view. Finn seems set to play ahead of the more Anderson-like Jade Dernbach.

This seems just the sort of plan destined to bite one squarely on the backside. You throw all your eggs in one basket and it turns out to have a hole in the bottom. It just makes no sense. Even Mike Atherton seems in favour (et tu Bruti?), he argues that whilst variety is good, picking the next in line is better.

No value it seems is placed on the special skill of the swing bowler. Had Graham Swann been injured, would Finn been next in line then? The question is, I hope, rhetorical. If Dernbach is good enough to be in the squad, and being picked ahead of Shahzad suggest he is, then he must play.


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Amongst the praise for Jonathan Trott there were, however, some slight rumblings about his pace of scoring. Batting so much with Alastair Cook probably hasn't helped this impression, but it is nonetheless true though that he is exceedingly well named. Nonetheless, as "Nas" pointed out once or seven times, five days of Test cricket is a long time. If you score 600 in two and half days, at a Trott like 2.2 an over, then, weather permitting, you still have that same amount of time again to bowl the other side out twice. Put simply, bat once and the speed of scoring becomes much less significant.

Cardiff was something of a freak result, but it is still the third match in a row, and the fourth in five games, that England have won whilst batting only once. In the process they have scored 620,513, 644 and 496. It may not be exciting cricket, and nor am I am advocating it as my preferred strategy, but it is, at the moment, demonstrably winning cricket.

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The use of the UDRS was again a talking point at Cardiff. Overall third umpire Rod Tucker had a good match, showing a surprising and admirable willingness to do his job and make the big calls.

Kevin Pietersen was unlucky - pre UDRS he would have survived - but Tucker got the decision dead right. In the case of Prasanna Jayawardene, caught off the glove down the leg side, the evidence appeared less than conclusive at first. Tucker, however, trusted what he saw and what he heard (the sound was apparently clearer and easier to place in his box than on tv) and, after being made to confirm his judgement by the on field umpire, made the call, again correctly.

In the Sky commentary box, Nas questioned whether Tucker could be "100% certain" and suggested that if he wasn't, the batsman should get the benefit of the doubt. This is absurd. To reject an appeal on that basis would be to impose a ridiculous standard of proof. Men are routinely sent to the electric chair on less demanding grounds. Fortunately Billy Doctrove only required that he was sure. He didn't add "beyond a reasonable doubt" but we can take that as implicit. Perhaps it should be made explicitly so.

The only blot on Tucker's copy book came with his failure to uphold Andrew Strauss' low slip catch on the second day. We have seen such catches routinely rejected on replay and even though this was probably the most "out" one I have ever seen, it was hardly a great surprise to see Tucker follow a long line of third umpires in chickening out. As the honour system seems now to be a utopian dream, this issue could again be rectified by considering the burden of proof.

Countless tea-time demonstrations have shown that catches that look to have bounced haven't, for reasons of camera forshortening and two dimensional imagery. On this basis I propose cricket takes a leaf from rugby's book and allows the on field umpire to ask the question "Is there any reason I can't give this out". The third umpire would then have to find conclusive evidence, such as was the case with Phillip Hughes in the winter, to reject the claimed catch.

KP: One last shot at greatness?

It seems that each of the last six or so series have been 'career-defining' for Kevin Pietersen and each time he has done just enough to defer a definitive judgement. During the winter one destructive double hundred against a demoralised attack papered over a series where he was well and truly overtaken as England's leading batsman and as the opposition's prize wicket. The KP that we hoped would emerge after 2005 would have taken the Aussies to the cleaners in Melbourne and Sydney. Instead this week, in the lead up to the first Test of the summer, he received another vote of confidence from the selectors. Time and patience are rapidly running out for one, who, for a time seemed destined for greatness.

There was a point when that greatness seemed within his grasp. I discount his epic 2005 Ashes innings because it was too early in his career to judge and, rather like Botham's Headingley knock, it owed a little too much to luck to be considered of the highest class. To my mind that point occurred at Mohali in 2008, ironically his last game as England captain. Responding to a dramatic defeat in the previous game and to an Indian first innings of 453, he smashed 144 off 201 balls. The innings included a trademark switch hit six over extra cover off Harbhajan.

If we really have seen the best of him then this was the game he should have retired on. In the previous match, he had had got out to Youvraj's left armers and the Indians were not slow to reintroduce him here. But having dismissed him verbally as a bent-armed purveyor of less than clean pies, Pietersen then played him with according disdain. It was impossible to imagine the kryptonite-like effect that such bowlers would increasingly have. Perhaps it is this fallibility more than anything else that has taken greatness, in the eyes of most, out of his reach.

Even if the majority view is wrong, it must also be asked whether he still seeks that greatness. Back in 2008, there was no doubt. In my view, however, he never really worked out what was necessary to achieve it. There have been many unorthodox batsmen capable of great innings but few great batsmen who have been unorthodox. Like Virender Sehwag, Pietersen seems destined for the former category rather than the latter.

Viv Richards should have been his role model - an unorthodox, destructive batsman who shared Pietersen's love of the leg side. Rarely, however, did he seem give his wicket away softly and little did he seem to care for personal landmarks (although I'm sure he did). Richards also exuded ultra self-confidence, unlike KP, however, he never appeared to care what anyone thought. Andrew Strauss in his recent book says of Pietersen that "You get the impression he wants desperately to be liked but does not know the best way go about it.” It is a telling statement. Great people don't care about being liked or loved, which is probably a good thing as many are not. It is harder for the average person to associate himself with a great person, therefore he tends to be admired instead. Adoration is saved for more agreeably flawed characters such as Andrew Flintoff. As it stands today, Pietersen is neither loved for his flaws nor admired for his greatness.

On the positive side it seems at least that Andy Flower has not given up. Instead he has challenged KP to become the best batsman in the world. We await now the response. Does he still want to be great? With retirement rumours too regular to be easily dismissed, it is his hunger for the game that is now most in doubt. All cricket lovers should hope that he can find that desire within, because at only 30 his best years may still lie ahead. Whilst Pietersen will never be loved, he may yet be admired.