ANDREW STRAUSS may have only one more innings – possibly as early as today – to save himself from being dropped from the Test side for the first time since his eye-catching debut at Lord’s three years ago.

The opener has endured a miserable 12 months in the international game and there is a growing argument in favour of leaving him out of this winter’s Test tour of Sri Lanka. He has already lost his place in the one-day team and has not scored a century for England in any form of the game since August 2006.

Shortly before the series with India, Strauss spoke about how jaded he felt after being on the road pretty much nonstop since last October. Michael Vaughan, his captain, responded by saying that the team management needed to look after players such as Strauss and Kevin Pietersen, who had also complained of fatigue.

Unlike Strauss, however, Pietersen’s game is not obviously suffering from his heavy schedule and there appears to be no question of resting him from any matches yet. The case for Strauss, 30, being given an extended break is strong. Even though England will not want him in their forthcoming ODIs or the Twenty20 world championship, he will spend the next five weeks playing for Middlesex. He should be told to take the Sri Lanka tour off to recharge his batteries, spend more time with his young family and work on his batting technique, which is plainly in need of an overhaul.

On Friday night he was suckered by Zaheer Khan into hooking at a short ball – a reprise of his dismissals in Brisbane at the start of last winter’s Ashes series.

Since scoring a century, as captain, at Leeds in August last year, Strauss has scored 686 runs in 24 Test innings at an average of 28.6. His biggest innings of 96 came earlier in this series with India at Lord’s, but he was given an easy let-off in the fifties. He also scored a second-innings half-century at Trent Bridge, but threw away his wicket with an uncharacteristic waft.

During the same period he has scored 557 runs in 22 one-day internationals at an average of 25.3, with a best score of 78. He was dropped at the start of the World Cup, only to regain his place towards the end of England’s ignominious campaign, but has not been chosen for any of the limited-overs matches this summer. His demotion from the one-day side is likely to lead to him being awarded a downgraded England contract this month.

The only Test match Strauss has missed is in Lahore two winters ago, when he was granted permission to return home for the birth of his first child.

Various factors may have influenced the decline of a player who scored his first 1,000 Test runs in record time – within eight months of his debut. Losing out to Andrew Flintoff for the captaincy of last winter’s Ashes tour may have been one; miserable luck with umpiring decisions in the early matches in Australia could have been another.

But the biggest change in his circumstances has been the loss of his regular opener partner, Marcus Trescothick. They formed a prolific pairing that yielded eight century starts, but the key point was that Trescothick was happy to give a lead, which left Strauss to play in his shadow.

Since Trescothick dropped out of the side last autumn, citing stress, Strauss appears to have felt, as the senior partner to Alastair Cook, that he should play more aggressively. But this suits neither his game nor his temperament.

The case for Strauss not travelling with the squad to Sri Lanka is eased by the fact that England have a ready-made replacement opener in Vaughan, who has returned to Test cricket this summer with success, scoring two centuries at No 3.

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