Our role is to provide the best facilities and we invest pounds 8m a year in that. But it has to be a burning desire which takes an individual to the top.”Lewis feels that the level of junior improvement will eventually pay off. “Until three or four years ago we didn’t have players worthy of the investment Now we are definitely seeing the benefit. The trick is to have a stream of juniors who you think have a genuine chance and then the law of averages should take over.”And then, when he or she is appointed by the end of next month, the performance director may eventually have something with which to work.RONALD ATKIN.

THE STORY of the first day of the Melbourne Test was told before play began on the barometer, which had plunged overnight from “change” to “much rain”. The first shower occurred at 10.32am precisely, and then relented. The cassocks of the youth choir that sang the anthems billowed in a strong south-westerly, but the umpires let a decent Boxing Day crowd know that play would start only 10 minutes late. But by 11.10am the rain had become persistent, and it did not stop until 4pm Play was abandoned at 4.15pm. It had been a melancholy spectacle, but in the small window that did open in the hour before the Fourth Test was scheduled to start, there was enough incident to give the devotees plenty to chew on.
Mark Taylor won the toss for the fourth time in succession. (“Stewart’s a useless tosser,” was the swift response from the press box.) For the second time in the series, Taylor put England in.

He is quite deliberately making a habit of it.England had decided to play Alex Tudor as the fourth man in an all-pace attack (Peter Such was out), but Tudor reported a niggle and his place went to Angus Fraser. When Tudor fell off the batting order, that made up Alec Stewart’s mind for him. After opening stands of 11, 46, 2, 5, 8, and 27 (average 18.16), he decided he would open the batting with Michael Atherton, and Warren Hegg, the Lancashire wicket-keeper, would make his debut “It’s a positive move. We’re trying to make something happen in this game,” said Graham Gooch, the manager.A third happening on a dismal morning was the emergence of clear evidence that scapegoating has begun with a rumble on the subject of Bumble, aka David Lloyd, the coach, whose tenure, it is reported, is to be ended after the World Cup in June instead of December when his contract is up. Apparently, this is an idea being spread by his opponents, since Lloyd himself is not at all keen on it, and would expect compensation.

It is his bad luck, though, that the chairmanship of the England management committee is passing from his ally Bob Bennett to Brian Bolus, not a noted Lloyd supporter and a keen admirer of Bob Woolmer, the Englishman who is coaching South Africa.After such a bleak series – so far, at least – victims will inevitably be identified and sacrificed. Lloyd, whose fault is to be ingenuous rather than disingenuous, is certainly a candidate, though not as strong, surely, as the selectors.The great pity of the day is that the Test on Boxing Day is a fiercely observed local ritual. There are special editions of the papers, and men sneak back early from family Christmases elsewhere. For many, the approach to the ground is delightful, through Treasury and Fitzroy Gardens, where walkers are reminded that possums are an endangered species. The ground is the second largest in the world after Eden Gardens in Calcutta. With 57,000 tickets sold for the day, it was half-full, which was not bad considering the state of the series and the scudding grey clouds. And it is twice as many as can be shoehorned into Lord’s on a Saturday.The most interesting incidents were over and done with, however, before most spectators had taken their seats.England’s selectors had decided not to choose the team until the morning of the game.

Gooch explained that they needed to see how much green grass remained on the wicket – Fraser reported later that there is not much. The MCG wicket this year has bounced on day one, flattened into a good batting strip, before cracking, turning and keeping low.Nevertheless, England chose an unbalanced attack. The idea was to keep Darren Gough, Alan Mullally and Dean Headley from Adelaide and replace Such, who had bowled well there, with the raw talent and considerable pace of Tudor.Tudor has been injury-prone in the past, but he had managed to stay fit until Christmas Day when he reported a niggle in his hip to the physiotherapist, Wayne Morton. Tudor had played left back in a game of football with which these cricketers chose to celebrate the birth of Christ, although that is not blamed for his indisposition.