After the selection of Graham Onions and Tim Bresnan in England’s first Test squad of the summer, national selector Geoff Miller was at pains to express that the team was no longer a closed shop.

“We’ve been designated as a closed shop for quite some time. This just shows to county cricket that we are prepared to open it up. If you perform in county cricket over a period of time then you will get an opportunity.”

So the England side is no longer a closed shop, but has anyone stopped to think what hours it should open?

Poor Owais Shah has been banging on the shop door for a couple of years now, watching Ian Bell and Steve Harmison gorge themselves on sweets through the murky glass. All he wanted was a bag of frozen peas, but he couldn’t even get that. Finally the door opened a crack and Shah squeezed through, only for Geoff Miller to immediately fling it wide open and usher him back out along with Bell and Harmison.

In the Eighties and Nineties, the England shop was open all hours. Not only that, but you didn’t necessarily have to pay. Cricketers from far and wide would swarm in, take what they wanted and swarm out, often never to be seen again. The weekly stock take of runs and wickets inevitably showed an England shop running at a considerable loss.

No, an ever-open shop is no good to anyone, so England should consider putting some hours on the door. You want the shop accessible, but perhaps only to a select few and you don’t want people barging in at just any old time. There’s a happy medium and what’s wrong with a good old-fashioned nine ‘til five?

Then everyone knows where they are. They’re at work, nowhere near the shop.

See King Cricket’s regular blog at www.kingcricket.co.uk. King Cricket is a cult figure in the world of cricket blogs and was TWC’s first Best-of-blogs winner in April 2008.