England will hardly have had time to give them a second thought before arriving at Lord’s. But New Zealand, fresh from a successful summer at home on surfaces not entirely dissimilar to English pitches, will have had three weeks on tour.They will be, as ever, greater than the sum of their parts, and Fletcher has gone out of his way to mention how much better prepared than England they will be also. Jones is at the stage where Harmison was a mere eight months ago: he has to learn his game.To do that, he also needs more bowling, having had over a year off after his horrific knee injury. “He has played so little cricket, and some days you are going to think, ‘Is this guy as good as we thought he was?’,” Fletcher said.A couple of those days occurred in Antigua last week when, on a flat pitch, Jones was carted long before Lara came in. So precious has he become that there was an equal case for sending him home to put his feet up until shortly before 20 May, when the First Test starts against New Zealand.His place for the one-dayers, which do not finish until 5 May, might profitably have gone to Jones, who lacks bowling. When things are not going as they might he is aware enough to do the things that work, to get back, as Fletcher said, to a basic trigger point.Harmison is the most exciting English fast bowler for a generation, and the selectors perhaps had little option but to pick him for the seven-match one-day series that begins in Guyana today He has yet to learn how to play one-day cricket properly.

There was no period in that epic innings when Lara looked like being out, but with an old ball, Harmison gave him several troubling moments, beating him and hitting the bat hard.Harmison has now worked out his own game and under-stands it. The latter remains merely an English desire, but Harmison has arrived in the former category.It has taken him four years to become an overnight success. He took 23 wickets in the series, four fewer than John Snow managed in four matches for the last England side to win in the Caribbean 36 years ago (which is a measure, incidentally, of Snow’s stature and no slight at all on Harmison).As Fletcher pointed out, Harmison was giving the hurry-up to Brian Lara last week when the batsman had 200 on his way to his record 400. In Stephen Harmison (and to a lesser extent, for the moment, Simon Jones) their dreams are coming true. Throughout Nasser Hussain’s captaincy, he frequently referred to the necessity in modern big cricket of possessing menacing pace or puzzling, unorthodox spin.

He might have liked to enjoy for a little longer the 3-0 series victory against West Indies, rounded off by a draw which demanded a professional maturity that England have not always found easy to come by. But Fletcher, as it were, knew the score.When he was asked what the win meant in Australian terms, he said: “We have got closer, we are improving all the time so we have got to be getting closer How close is subjective You only know when you play them We’re getting there, but there’s still room for improvement. Australia also won the first three Tests in the Caribbean on their last visit a year ago, but lost the fourth. In Sri Lanka recently, they exhibited characteristic qualities by winning all three matches after conceding a first-innings lead, whereas England eventually lost there na?ly and feebly last year.But this is a different England. We can improve in all facets of the game by working hard, and hopefully that is the attitude they [the players] take.

Other-wise we will go backwards.”With that reply, then, the mystery deepened Fletcher recognised the need to dampen his ardour Recent results supply a vague guideline. England should savour the moment of their historic victory in the Caribbean, but its enduring worth remains puzzling. Plenty of clues have been scattered in the past four weeks, offering cause for optimism, but the mystery will not finally be solved for another 18 months. As far as English cricket is concerned, all roads lead to the Ashes. History has something to do with that, but it is also because Australia provide the yardstick by which all other nations must be measured.If there was a slight suggestion of weariness in Duncan Fletcher’s voice the other day it was tempered by comprehension. Vaughan opening for England is one thing, but this series needs Lara back quickly.ONE-DAY SERIESToday: 1st ODI (Guyana) 24 April: 2nd ODI (Trinidad) 25 April: 3rd ODI (Trinidad) 28 April: 4th ODI (Grenada) 1 May: 5th ODI (St Lucia) 2 May: 6th ODI (St Lucia) 5 May: 7th ODI (Barbados).