No sooner have we done with the Champions Trophy than thoughts turn to the 2011 World Cup with the announcement of the draw for the competition’s group stages.

We all remember the last World Cup (it is hard to forget something that had more flab than Chubby Chandler): 16 teams playing 51 games over 47 agonising days. We were told that there would be no repeat of that West Indies debacle but with World Cup commercial agreements and the Future Tours Programme long in place, more of the same is in store in 2011.

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So, having recovered from the white blazer fiasco, TWC Towers has turned its attention to the make-up of England’s tour squad to South Africa, which is announced tomorrow.

In the post-Flintoff era, we’re back to trying to get 12 players into an XI. Six batters or five bowlers? That’s the conundrum. Duncan Fletcher was adamant that England needed a five-man attack. For most teams, it’s a luxury that they have rarely entertained. Or perhaps, they just have better bowlers.

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The question has been asked before but has evidently lost none of its pertinence: who would be an England captain?

It wasn’t so much that England’s Champions Trophy experience tugged its followers from one emotional polarity to the other and back again (a sequence of excellent, outstanding, bad, awful is good news for the bookies only). No, it was the way in which England’s bowlers took it upon themselves to test out the middle of the pitch as if it was an especially comfy bed at an MFI sale.

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