NOW that England have picked Darren Pattinson -- the most speculative awful selection since Duncan Fletcher dragged out Ashley Giles for the first Ashes in 2006 -- they will have to stick with the Australian seamer when the squad for the third Test against South Africa is announced on Saturday.

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They can hardly admit an error before the Edgbaston game, which starts next Wednesday, but the idea of drafting in Pattinson must have damaged the confidence of candidates such as Chris Tremlett and Matthew Hoggard. The England selectors seem to have forgotten Kabir Ali, a similar outswing fast-medium bowler to Pattinson, only probably better and much more experienced in home conditions, including Headingley.

Kabir has been improving at Worcestershire, nipping out top order batsmen for 40-plus wickets in Division Two. Lower standard? Well, that won't stop England bringing back his colleague Simon Jones when the time comes. Pattinson had taken a creditable 29 wickets before his call-up, though the fact he missed Nottinghamshire's Division One game at Headingley underlines the lack of evidence to suggest he might succeed as a horse for a course.

The word has it on the circuit that Pattinson, not at all a bad operator, was beginning to feel the grind of week-to-week bowling already, a new experience for the Victorian at the age of 29. His figures were tailing off until he took 5-72 against Surrey at Trent Bridge. Nevertheless England should back their own judgment and stay with him, hoping he will blossom in the face of public derision.  

In any case England's upper order batsmen did their bowlers no favours. And the lasting memory of this comprehensive 10-wicket defeat has to be of James Anderson holding out bravely as nightwatchman for almost two hours, taking blows to the body, only for Kevin Pietersen to throw away his wicket within six minutes and in just about the grossest dereliction of duty one cam imagine.

It was not so much Pietersen's actual second-innings dismissal, attempting not to hit a fourth boundary in five balls, that stuck in the craw but his whole attitude to the job in hand. He set a reckless tone in the all-important first innings, and it was extraordinary that Pietersen was given a relatively easy ride by the media, most notably The Times and Daily Mail, praising his talent (on show when it suited him, they didn't add).

England's coach Peter Moores tried to explain the Pattinson pick when he said: "You've got to take advice on where any bowler is at a given time - is he bowling well, how's he going, what's he doing? We will do that with all the bowlers out there -- that's what we've got Geoff Miller for, that's what we've got James Whitaker for - people are out there telling you what's happening with a given bowler.

"You can look at their stats, but you can't always go and see them yourself because you are playing a Test match or whatever and the schedules don't allow you to do that.

"Darren was the pick because of how he'd been bowling in county cricket. He is a similar bowler to Matthew Hoggard in some ways, but that was the choice, and it wasn't a choice taken lightly. It was a long meeting."