A game has developed in recent times during press conferences with Andy Flower. Football commentators would probably call it a game of chess.

A journalist prefaces a question in which he wants to elicit a clue about selection for the Test team by saying: “I know you’re not going to give away any clues about selection for the Test team, but…” Everyone chuckles, including Flower, who proceeds to give an answer of studied caution, elegantly saying not very much really. Then another journalist tries, and Flower deadbats him too. And so on until we’re all none the wiser. Cats and mice could scarcely be less playful.

Usually this can be put down to the fact that the England management are damned if they’re going to let the hacks predict their own team for them – a position that has hardened since Andrew Strauss resumed the captaincy just over a year ago and turned to concrete in the summer when a group of journalists raided a waste-paper basket in the room in which selectors had just been meeting and literally pieced together the fifth Ashes Test squad using the shreds of evidence carelessly left behind.

But, with less than 48 hours to go before the first Test here in Chittagong, Flower can be forgiven his reticence: places really are up for grabs. The questions are as genuine as the lack of answers. Bangladesh, as more than one person has remarked with only a hint of condescension, was not supposed to be as difficult as this.

The largest question mark currently hangs over the make-up of the bowling attack, which itself is dependent on the number of batsmen England play. Both six, with Michael Carberry making his debut as Alastair Cook’s opening partner, and five, with Jonathan Trott promoted to open and Ian Bell drafted up to No 3, are possible.

And that’s where the real chin-scratching starts. Graeme Swann is a given, and James Tredwell – after getting through 47.2 overs in the three-day game against Bangladesh A for an impressive haul of eight wickets – is nearly there. With Kevin Pietersen currently looking more threatening as a bowler than a batsman, England could well go in with three off-spinners (and they said the breed was a dying one!).

But what of the seamers? As things stand, the smartish money is on two out of Stuart Broad, Tim Bresnan and Steven Finn: line and length (when things click), swing, and bounce. Or possibly all three if England pick six batsmen, three seamers and a spinner.

And yet there is an element of wings and prayers about each of them. Broad must prove his dodgy back is up to the task; Bresnan failed to take a wicket in the three-day game after finishing as England’s leading wicket-taker in the one-day series; and Finn is 20 and has not yet been here a week. His Test debut would be one of the more unexpected in recent years.

In fact, if you really wanted to come over all doom and gloom, you could point out that Trott and Bell could both be playing out of position, Pietersen can’t buy a run, and Matt Prior would a place too high at No 6 (unless, of course, he bats at No 7). But if you did, Flower would just grin and make a likeably gnomic remark about the challenges of being a coach and a selector.

Right now, it’s hard enough being a journalist…

Lawrence Booth was writing from Chittagong. Lawrence writes on cricket for the Daily Mail, and you can sign up for his weekly newsletter the Top Spin here. His fourth book, What Are The Butchers For? And Other Splendid Cricket Quotations, is out now, published by A&C Black