They have performed a rapid volte face on Alec Stewart and dropped John Crawley, one of the few batsmen with a technique to match the Australians and by far England's best player of Shane Warne, one match after deciding that he had done sufficiently well to be promoted to No 3.

This felony is compounded by the decision to play seven specialist batsmen against an attack missing two of the fast bowlers most responsible for winning the series for Australia before the sixth and final Test starts on Thursday.

There are a number of changes involved in this confusion. The dropping of Crawley makes room for the return of Mark Ramprakash and Mark Butcher; and Stewart drops back to No 3, not to No 6, a move which at least could have been defended on the grounds of giving him more time to recover from his wicketkeeping duties. Ben Hollioake is retained in the party of 14 but is very unlikely to play.

Darren Gough is not included, despite officially expressed hopes that he might have recovered from his knee injury - Devon Malcolm's 10 for 65 on Saturday no doubt settled that matter -Peter Martin, deservedly, returns as cover for Dean Headley, whose latest small ailment is a heel injury, and a decision on whether to play Robert Croft or Phil Tufnell, or both, has been postponed.

Individually, neither will put much fear into the Australians. Croft has taken his eight wickets in this series at 54; Tufnell his 24 in 10 previous Tests against them at 46. It is my impression that Croft is now the more varied and dangerous bowler, but he has had no pitches on which to make the point.

The one sort of pitch on which England have not yet tried to win this summer is one which turns for finger spinners; but unless the pitch looks a good deal drier than anticipated in mid-week, Croft will either go back to county cricket with Crawley, after playing nine of the last 10 Tests, or Tufnell will suffer the surely unique experience of being picked in the squad six times without actually playing.

The seven-batsmen strategy was feasible before the weekend, because all will acknowledge the need for England to make sufficient runs. Adam Hollioake's brilliant innings at Lord's on Saturday, however, before the very eyes of David Graveney and Mike Gatting, should have been enough to convince them that he is a Test No 6 at least; one capable, moreover, of useful wickets: a potential Basil D'Oliveira, Doug Walters or, in a bowling sense at least, Steve Waugh.

If seven batsmen seemed a good strategy before Hollioake's innings, therefore, it became less attractive than the alternative of five bowlers after it. Nor is there much of the much-talked-about policy of continuity in dropping Crawley to make way for Ramprakash, who will bat at six.

Crawley, it is true, has failed in the first innings throughout this series: only 26 of his 243 runs at 30 have come in the first knock; but, like Atherton, whose own top first-innings score is 41, he has attracted some outstanding balls. He is in far better form than his captain and, ironically, in the last match, than Ramprakash, too.

Ramprakash is too good a player not to have been given the chance, sooner or later, to improve on his wholly unworthy batting average of 16 from 19 previous Tests. The fact is that when they last toured together, in South Africa in 1995-96, Ramprakash was given the first run but Crawley emerged the stronger player. He is left out after 12 matches in which he has made two centuries -one at the Oval last year -and fielded well.

Both Ramprakash and Butcher might have been better served by being asked to start afresh in the Caribbean after Christmas.

There was an argument against dropping Butcher and asking Stewart to open last time. That policy having been relatively successful, however, it is hard to see why it has been immediately abandoned.

ENGLAND (from)

M A Atherton (Lancashire, capt), M A Butcher (Surrey), A R Caddick, R D B Croft (Glamorgan), D W Headley (Kent), B C Hollioake (Surrey), A J Hollioake (Surrey), N Hussain (Essex), D E Malcolm (Derbyshire), P J Martin (Lancashire), M R Ramprakash (Middlesex), A J Stewart (Surrey), G P Thorpe (Surrey), P C R Tufnell (Middlesex).