The feeling is growing that the selectors are wrong to be treating Michael Vaughan as if he were Charles I in the days before Parliament began to assert itself. Like it or not, if his broken finger has mended by the time that the second Test starts on Friday at Leeds, England will be captained by a batsman who has missed their past 16 Test matches.

Vaughan has no divine right to captain his country, but for the time being I remain a Royalist. He has been speaking like a worried, almost desperate man in recent days, understandably so, perhaps, after so long an absence. In doing so he has overstated his case but the point to grasp is that his position as a captain in exile has never been his fault.

After a fourth operation on his right knee last summer he fought to recover from an injury that pessimists, among them some highly-qualified orthopaedic surgeons, felt he might never overcome.

Having finally played some cricket this year in a state of full fitness, and belatedly actually scored a few runs too – his 70-odds in Bridgetown and Leeds – he broke a finger. Even if England win the first Test under Andrew Strauss’s command today, Vaughan will take over again from Owais Shah at Headingley Carnegie. Shah’s two single-figure scores at Lord’s have made that a less embarrassing change than the selectors might otherwise have found it.

He will resume, however, needing to justify his position as a batsman rather more than as the strong and flexible captain who, all too briefly, brought the Ashes home. Such has been the weight of runs in home Tests by all those who have played in England’s top six since the start of last season it will be imperative for Vaughan to score a century in the three Tests of the series that remain.

The case for his holding on to the one-day leadership is far less clear. A split capaincy has not been tested for any length of time by England and it worked for Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting. But that argument may be seen in better perspective when the current hurly-burly is done.