Suspension of Doubt

With the World T20 grabbing the headlines it's been easy to overlook the fact that the County Championship has been jogging along in the background for the last couple of weeks.

Durham are top, and both Steve Harmison and Graham Onions have been in the wickets. Patrick, at Line and Length, reflects on some of the questions which their successes pose.

I'm not sure that I agree with Patrick about Harmison being 'too soft' (although he really should be wary of saying things like that with the media around). However, doubts about the clarity of his mentality will never be far from the surface when an England team is about to be chosen and the doubts are perhaps stacked a little higher than the hopes these days.

Onions is the coming man, having bowled well against the inept West Indians, but, more importantly, having carried on taking wickets since. I have a feeling that he's probably a little ahead of Harmison in the running just now.

Elsewhere, while it seems perverse to invoke the example of a Twenty20 tournament when selecting a Test team, the fact that Adil Rashid generally showed up well, coupled with the fact that Panesar continues to struggle for his county, means that the Yorkshireman is surely the front-runner to partner Graeme Swann if England do decide to play two spinners in Cardiff.