WHEN is a senior player not really a senior player? When he plays for England in their present state.

On Thursday, England’s captain will be Andrew Strauss, a man who made his Test debut only 27 months ago. Their gnarliest veteran will be Marcus Trescothick, aged 30. The most prized wicket will be that of Kevin Pietersen, a Test cricketer for only a year. Five of the likely squad — Alastair Cook, Jamie Dalrymple, Liam Plunkett, Sajid Mahmood and Monty Panesar — are new since the Ashes series and only Trescothick and Matthew Hoggard have Test careers stretching back three years.

Funny things have happened since last summer and one of them is that the understudies have been outperforming the regulars. In nine Tests since the Ashes, Strauss has averaged 29, Andrew Flintoff 31 (with a sadly muted strike-rate of only 51) and Geraint Jones, 20. Of the experienced batsmen, only Trescothick has maintained his form, averaging 44, and he missed a whole series.

Among the bowlers, the main threat has been not Flintoff (36 wickets at 30), or Stephen Harmison (17 at 34), but Hoggard, who has sweated and swung his way to 39 wickets at 25. He has also has been there at mid-off, in Michael Vaughan’s place, to inject some nous into the ears of the younger seamers. When Mahmood bowled an abysmal first Test over at Lord’s in May, Hoggard had a word and Mahmood promptly took three wickets. If the old boy had been there for the one-day series, Mahmood might have gone for only seven an over.

The senior players, as Strauss has said, have not been playing like senior players. Or rather, Trescothick and Hoggard have, but the rest have not. And they have a perfectly good excuse: they are not, in fact, very senior.

Strauss seems it because of his sangfroid and his effortless start in Tests. The others seem it because they won the Ashes. But the gulf between appearance and reality shows up when the going gets tough and they do not have Vaughan to direct them, or Simon Jones to pull things round in midinnings, or Flintoff to carry them like an all-purpose colossus. England have used 20 players in Tests since the Ashes and several new boys have shone, notably Cook, Panesar and Owais Shah. As Robert Key has just reiterated with his 136 for the A team against the Pakistanis at Canterbury, England have strength in depth. What they are lacking is stature.

You cannot blame them: for various reasons, their last old guard — Nasser Hussain, Graham Thorpe and Mark Butcher — was suddenly disbanded. Butcher should surely be involved again. But against Pakistan, also a young team apart from the magnificently middle-aged Inzamam-ul-Haq, three Ashes winners in particular need to pull themselves up to their full height.

Strauss has to pass 150 for the first time, picking up Vaughan’s habit of making what Graham Gooch calls “daddy hundreds”. Captaincy often raises a cricketer’s game before depressing it and Strauss could have the job for just long enough not to get weighed down.

Geraint Jones, selected largely for his batting at No 7, has been performing like a No 8. He has to be a No 6, filling part of the big hole left by Flintoff and matching the dangerous Kamran Akmal.

Harmison has to sort out his radar. In the one-day series, surrounded by hapless newcomers, he was Curtly Ambrose at the Brit Oval and a garden hose everywhere else. At Lord’s, with Hoggard back to share the load, he needs to stamp his authority from the start, as he did in the Ashes.

Australia had several old dogs then and apart from Shane Warne, England managed to muzzle them and even bully a couple. Some were pensioned off, but then, like French footballers, abruptly reprieved.

So it will be Dad’s Army bidding to regain the Ashes in November. That gives England a glimmer of hope — but only if their own big names get their act together.