THE England selectors have five days to decide whether to accept medical advice that Marcus Trescothick will have recovered sufficiently from his stress-related illness to withstand the white-hot glare of an Ashes series. Not just any Ashes series but the most hyped there has been.

Confirming yesterday that he will be left out for next month’s ICC Champions Trophy when the squad of 14 is announced on Monday, David Graveney, the chairman of selectors, said: “It is a blow that Marcus will not be available, but we are delighted he will be for Australia.”

Available, yes, as the team’s best slip catcher and as one of only three England batsmen ranked in the world’s top 20. But whether he should be chosen in all the circumstances is not so certain. Even if he were in good form and full of confidence, there would at least be an argument against his travelling, based on a disappointing tour to Australia in 2002-03, when he averaged 25 in the Tests, and on his far inferior record for England overseas.

Before this season, when he averaged a fraction under 27 in his 12 innings against Sri Lanka and Pakistan, he averaged only 36.20 from his 34 Tests away from England, 20 runs fewer than his 56.23 at home.

The selectors will ignore all this and pick him for Australia, if not necessarily for the World Cup, but it is a mystery how he can be considered mentally fit for a tour starting in the first full week of November if the medical advice is that he is not ready for a trip to India only three weeks earlier.

The Australia bowlers will not hesitate to attack Trescothick at his weakest points, which are part technical — a minimum of foot movement that, when the ball is moving laterally, often betrays his formidable talent — and part psychological. They will be swift to remind him that, despite averaging 43 in the Ashes series of 2005, he has never scored a Test hundred against Australia.

An ECB spokesman said that Trescothick had been prepared to go to India and that it was the medical specialist, Performance Healthcare, that effectively made him unavailable. Recommended by the Professional Cricketers’ Association, with the approval of Somerset and the ECB, it has been advising him on how to manage his stress since his abrupt return from Baroda at the end of February, immediately before the Test series started in India.

“I was keen to take part in the ICC Champions Trophy, but I do appreciate that my specialist’s advice is that I must first continue the treatment devised for me,” Trescothick said. “Having come to terms with the full extent of my illness last winter, I recognise that I am now well on course to make a full recovery and I am determined to play a full part in the Ashes tour.”

His wife Hayley’s post-natal depression after the birth of their daughter, Ellie, in April 2005 is thought to have contributed to his sudden inability to cope with the strain of being away from home last winter, after a constant succession of high-profile appearances for England at home and away. He is one of five players planning to take their wife and child to Australia for most of the tour, from November to February.

Trescothick has gone through stages recognised by experts as being typical in stress disorders. First he denied that anything was wrong, then he made a partial recovery, manifested to some extent in his century at Lord’s on his return to the Test team against Sri Lanka in May and an average of 55 in the one-day series that followed. Finally he admitted his problem, but failures followed in the Test series against Pakistan (average 19). In the NatWest Series his scores have been 16, six and nought.

A Performance Healthcare spokesman said: “Rest is an important part of his treatment and he will need recovery time before the Ashes tour. Marcus has made significant progress, but being overseas for the Champions Trophy would interrupt the current treatment.”

The fact that the tournament is in India, reviving painful memories of his sudden loss of morale, may be a good reason why, for Trescothick’s psychological good, he should not go. It disrupts England’s World Cup planning, however, to be without their most experienced and, after Kevin Pietersen, most highly rated batsman.

Andrew Flintoff is expected to be named as captain for the Champions Trophy but may play only as a batsman. Michael Vaughan and Simon Jones have been ruled out and there are fitness doubts about Stephen Harmison, Ashley Giles, James Anderson, Liam Plunkett, Ian Blackwell and Darren Gough.

Trescothick will remain with the England squad for the last two matches against Pakistan this week, at Trent Bridge tomorrow and at Edgbaston on Sunday, but when either Ed Joyce or Alastair Cook replace him it will be the first time that he has been dropped since playing the first of his 123 internationals and 76 Tests in 2000.

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