News that Jimmy Anderson is still struggling with his knee-injury leaves England with only four fit quicks a week before the first Test, and an interesting quirk.

Of those four, three are from Durham – Graham Onions, Liam Plunkett and the uncapped Mark Davies (called up to the squad after impressing for the Performance Squad).

The irony is that it is a fourth Durham seamer – Steve Harmison, if you hadn’t guessed – that the South Africans would least like to face. Yet where is Harmy? At home in Ashington, that his name has hardly been mentioned a measure of Flower’s and Strauss’s decisive decision making and Harmison’s toothless Ashes performance.

In Durham they trust but, quite rightly, in Harmy no longer.

Sam Collins is website editor of thewisdencricketer.com