Next Thursday morning, barring injury, illness or accident to the chosen ones during the course of the previous 12 hours or so, James Anderson will pack his overnight bag, leave the team hotel in Manchester and head back over the Pennines en route to Chester-le-Street, where Lancashire will resume the second day of their championship match against Durham.

Anderson will only have arrived in Manchester the previous evening in any case, so his will be a fleeting visit, strictly a precaution. But woe betide the England team if it is a batsman who slips in the shower on the morning of the match.

Already this summer, though, Peter Moores has given the clearest indication that he advocates, certainly at this stage of the season, that players take as much opportunity to play cricket as is feasible, contrary to his predecessor's apparent belief that it was possible to rest players from work they had yet to do -- though rather like trying to force a second pint into a pot before the first is finished, it soon became evident that once fully rested you cannot put extra in for a rainy day.

Thus, at a stroke, has been erased what had become one of the great traditions in which, after any official pre-match duties, warm-ups, toss and what-have-you, there took place a much loved ceremonial, missing only as a prologue an announcement in mellifluous tones that James Anderson Will Now Bowl At A Single Stump. As a preliminary to a day's Test cricket it knocked Jerusalem and its rabble-rousing big-screen footage into a cocked hat.

Indeed, the days of the multitasking professional 12th man, the bloke who always seemed to be knocking on the door of the Test side, who got within the very precincts of the dressing room with the smell of liniment (actually it's fragrances by Hugo Boss now) only to be stymied again and again as fitness tests were passed, and potentially troublesome pitches reassessed on match morning as benign. Duncan Fletcher enjoyed inviting people to his party, the more the merrier, and if it meant they were unable to pursue their chosen career beyond bowling between motorway cones and mixing isotonic drinks, then so be it.

There will be times, as a strenu- ous summer progresses, that Moores will recognise the need for his players to have rest -- active or otherwise -- but for now, miles in the legs and rhythm is all important. And if it is hard to assess the benefits to Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison of spending the spring bowling for their respective counties rather than spending interminable hours trundling away in Caribbean nets, then the manner in which Ryan Sidebottom slotted into the side at a moment's notice and out-bowled everyone else shows the efficacy of the substance of practical playing over the theory of nets. All he did was what he had been doing.

Now he will get another chance, for the England selectors yesterday took the rare step of announcing not their squad but their XI for the third Test, which is due to start at Old Trafford on Thursday, a win in which will give England an unassailable 20 lead in the series. There would have been little cause for debate, however. The injury to the adductor muscle in Hoggard's right leg, something that in the stretch of a pace bowler's delivery takes a terrific strain, has not healed sufficiently for him to be considered, although he is making confident noises that he will be fit enough to pose a conundrum for the final Test should Sidebottom prosper once more against dismal opposition and not succumb to the knowledge that on this particular ground he has a record that is no less grim.

However, Ian Bell's stiff back has recovered (he was asked to demonstrate as much for Warwickshire yesterday.