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Andrew Strauss (Middlesex)
Two factors spoiled Strauss's chance of making more of his call-up for the
one-day tour of the subcontinent. One was Solanki, who was given every
chance to establish himself at the top of the order in Bangladesh. The other
was the Sri Lankan monsoon. After playing himself into the side by topscoring
in a warm-up game at Moratuwa, Strauss's only innings came during
the collective disaster at Dambulla. Rain in Colombo meant he would have
to wait to show whether he can complement organisation with flair. If he
can do that, then as captain of Middlesex, he could be a frontrunner in the
Future England Captain stakes.
2003: 1 ODI: 3 runs @ 3.00.
Graham Thorpe (Surrey)
Thorpe's year did not get going until September, and he was in no mood
to hang around. After some bitter personal problems and a string of
newspaper confessionals in which he revealed that he had been suffering
from depression, Thorpe's return was one of the highlights of England's
year. Confronted with a big South African total on his home ground at The
Oval, he hit 124 runs of comforting class and put on 268 with Trescothick.
England won and Thorpe, in his first Test for nearly 14 months, was clasped
to the bosom of the cricketing fraternity once more. But in Sri Lanka he
could not repeat the heroics of 2000-01, mainly because of Muralitharan's
doosra. Murali got him five times out of six in the Tests, and Thorpe admitted
that he had run out of ideas. From a man who remained England's best
player of spin, this was a worrying admission. But the middle order still felt
safer for his return.
2003: 6 Tests: 443 runs @ 44.30.
Jim Troughton (Warwickshire)
After leapfrogging his Warwickshire team-mate Ian Bell into the England
side, Troughton was unable to transfer his belligerence in four-day
Championship cricket to the one-day international stage, where bowlers were
quick to seize on a weakness against the short ball. His fielding in the covers
was spell-binding, but in the absence of anything to write home about with
the bat, journalists everywhere kept bringing up his grandfather, Patrick,
who once starred as BBC TV's Doctor Who.
2003: 6 ODI: 36 runs @ 9.00.
Craig White (Yorkshire)
Not for the first time in his England career, White's stock rose considerably
in his absence. He began the year by missing the final Ashes Test, and ended
it by missing England's trip to the subcontinent - where his canny reverse
swing and fleet-footed strokeplay would have been crucial - because of an
ongoing side problem, which precluded him from bowling. That injury did
relent long enough to allow White to make a solid contribution to England's
World Cup campaign as a thrifty second-change. But his pace had gone and,
with it apparently, his Test career.
2003: 5 ODI: 79 runs @ 26.33; 9 wickets @ 19.88.