The reason is that Zimbabwe's under-19 team are about to start a tour of England. The official policy of the England and Wales Cricket Board is that anyone not immediately in the running for selection for the senior England team will be available for all official under-19 representative matches.

Hollioake, David Sales of Northamptonshire, Dean Cosker of Glamorgan and Owais Shah of Middlesex have all now gained established places in their county teams for Championship matches, but all will be taken away for the series of two one-day junior internationals and three four-day 'Tests' in the first part of August. There will be others.

There are arguments on both sides of this particular aspect of the club versus country issue. Mickey Stewart, shortly to retire as director of national coaching and excellence, puts the case for the value of these under-19 games with fervour.

``They are great for the education of our most talented young players. Competitive games against the best under-19 players from the southern hemisphere were not given sufficient priority for the best part of 20 years and the result was that we won only four of them. When the likes of Hollioake and Sales are put on the stage against their equivalents from overseas they are expected to be the stars, the players who make the hundreds. When they play in county cricket there isn't the same pressure to perform.''

There is good sense here, certainly, although Stewart's view is definitely not shared by one of the selectors, Mike Gatting. He has no doubt that Shah would be better employed trying to make tough runs in the Championship rather than relatively easy ones against peers of his own age.

Stewart counters further: ``If Ben Hollioake hadn't achieved what he did for the under-19s in Pakistan last winter, he would not have been picked for the one-day internationals against Australia this season.''

True, no doubt. It certainly earned him his chance for the England A team in the first big match of the season and, characteristically, he took it. But it is surely one thing to send these players on a winter tour for experience when there is no counter-claim on their services; quite another to take them away from Championship matches.

Cosker should get a chance to show how quickly he has developed as a left-arm spinner in Glamorgan's match against the Australians this week. That they are not therefore engaged in a Championship match gives a chance for one of the chasing pack to usurp their lead and no-one wll be keener than Kent, whose despondency about defeat at Lord's will have to be rapidly overcome if they are to beat the champions, Leicestershire.