Unless weather bites deeply into this week’s Edgbaston Test, or an injury occurs in England’s 13-man squad, Durham can have only one of their two cricketers in the final XI.

If Paul Collingwood plays and bats at six, Steve Harmison could only play as one of a four-man attack, and Michael Vaughan will never go down that road again after it went horribly wrong in the First Test in Hamilton last March.

That match brought about the exclusion of Harmison and Matthew Hoggard, with a four-man attack entrusted to the improved James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Monty Panesar and Ryan Sidebottom for a record six Tests.

Andrew Flintoff broke that up by returning at Headingley and Sidebottom was unfit, but the woeful batting top order has rightly been blamed for the defeat.

The management’s unrewarded faith in the top five to deliver as a unit led to Collingwood being dropped, and his inclusion in this squad means it will be another safety first final selection on Wednesday; i.e., no Harmison, unless they gamble again on the first five and again omit Collingwood.

That would allow a five-man attack and give Harmison his best chance of playing, but captain, management and selectors are so cautious that a more likely bet would be for a member of the church to bet his last penny in a casino on zero coming up in the 37th slot on any roulette wheel. It does happen but not too often.

The worst message from the selectors went to Chris Tremlett, who was cover yet again in a 12-man squad for injury, but when Sidebottom went down, he was bypassed by Darren Pattinson and now is not in a 13-man party.

Confusion reigns still, even though Geoff Miller, Vaughan, Peter Moores & Co are publicly in tune using the same song sheet.

Instead of grasping the crucial nettle of balance, they have dumped it into the lap of captain and coach who will be no nearer to getting it right than at Headingley.

Stuart Broad is in the squad but hints about his “tiredness” after back-to-back Tests suggest he won’t play, despite a batting prowess that is developing so quickly that he looks a better middle-order prospect than Flintoff and Tim Ambrose.

A comparison worth noting is the records of Broad and Glenn McGrath after their first eight Test matches. Broad has 19 wickets at 49.36 while McGrath also had 19 wickets at 43.68 – and he was playing in a side with Shane Warne.

Other comparisons between several wicketkeepers in contention for the Ambrose spot were put into perspective by the dazzling performance of James Foster at the Rose Bowl on Saturday in the Twenty20 finals day. Geraint Jones and Phil Mustard are decent wicketkeepers, as are Ambrose and Matthew Prior, with Chris Read the better gloveman but a more anonymous batsman.

Foster was so eye-catching that his work standing up brought a valid comparison with England’s best-ever wicketkeeper, Alan Knott.

He brought off two leg-side stumpings off Ravid Bopara’s seamers but took your breath away with a leg-side take off a 5ft wide that bordered on the impossible when it arrived at yorker length. A certain four byes was reduced to a single but the watching national selector Miller now knows that the Essex man is a street ahead of all other contenders as a keeper.

He is no duffer with the bat, either, and has scored a first class double hundred, but even if his batting is marginally inferior for England to that of Prior, Ambrose and Jones, there should be no argument when a change is made.

Statistics bear that out. If he averages 30 for England compared with a few notches more by the others, that amounts to no more than a 50-run difference in a four-match series, but that is more than wiped out when a sharp chance is taken instead of being missed off a top batsman, as happens with the others.

Prior’s shelling out of Mahela Jayawardene off the unfortunate Sidebottom last winter cost over 300 runs, so the Sussex man was heavily in debit. Furthermore, Foster lost his place only because of an early-season broken arm in 2003, and that brought back Alec Stewart for a triumpant last lap.

Foster was then leapfrogged by Jones, Read et al, but the current grapevine view that Foster is the best natural of the lot was there for all to see on Saturday. England are a side that needs to maximise every small percentage, and the sooner they do that by recalling Foster the better for all concerned – his captain, other players and the selectors whose reputation is in need of repair.