Four uncapped players, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, Phil Mustard and Graeme Swann, were named in England’s touring team for the second winter visit to Sri Lanka yesterday but there was no place for either Mark Ramprakash or Andrew Strauss. Stephen Harmison was included only on condition that he is able to prove his fitness and form in two four-day matches in South Africa next month.

Facing stern competition from the less venomous but far more consistent pair of Matthew Hoggard and Ryan Sidebottom, not to mention Broad, Harmison will play for the Highveld Lions as a realistic alternative to running up and down in the nets at Loughborough. His second game in Potchefstroom is due to end on November 18, by which time the 15 other players named yesterday will already be in Colombo.

Harmison’s recovery from a torn muscle in the back should have been thoroughly tested by then, under the watchful eye of Ottis Gibson, his former Durham teammate and the new England bowling coach, All the indications are that England will field a four-man attack, augmented by the medium pace of Bopara and Paul Collingwood, when the Test series starts in Kandy on December 1, so Harmison will need to be at his most potent and, crucially for him, his most confident if he is to show that defeat in England’s previous series in Sri Lanka in 2003-04 owed something to his absence, as Duncan Fletcher, the head coach at the time, claimed.

England have two three-day games in the second half of November to sort out their options but at this range Owais Shah is the outsider of the seven specialist batsmen, of whom the captain, Michael Vaughan, will return to his original role as an opening batsman, partnering Alastair Cook. Strauss has lost his place at least until the tour to New Zealand after Christmas, having gone backwards since Andrew Flintoff was preferred to him as captain in Australia last year and technical deficiencies began to be exposed by the surgical accuracy of Glenn McGrath and Stuart Clark.

“He hasn’t performed to the level he can,” David Graveney, the chairman of selectors who picked the team in conjunction with Geoff Miller and Peter Moores, the head coach, said. “There are technical issues on which I’m sure he’ll work. He is acutely disappointed but we anticipate that he will have a major role to play in the next 12 months.”

The omission of Strauss, a centrally contracted batsman who has scored ten Test hundreds, albeit none since his 116 against Pakistan, when captain, at Headingley Carnegie in August 2006, is unlikely to be the end of the road for so determined a man but the decision to ignore Ramprakash surely is, for all Graveney’s assertion that he is being considered as a replacement in case of injury. Asked if he was left out because there are still doubts about his temperament, Graveney said: “Certainly not.” He admitted that age was a consideration.

Ageism might have been more apt. Ramprakash is 38 and fit enough to have dazzled a majority of the millions who watched his progress to the Strictly Come Dancing title last year while only two batsmen, Kevin Pietersen and Collingwood, could average better than 33 in the Ashes Tests.

The selectors have failed to appreciate that Ramprakash, who resolved to relax and enjoy his cricket when he moved to Surrey, has undergone the sort of metamorphosis that the other recent super-hero of county cricket, Mushtaq Ahmed, achieved when he changed his attitude fundamentally. He would not have scored two hundreds in the televised match on which hung the outcome of the LV County Championship had he still been the careworn batsman who lost his place with a Test average 74 runs lower than the 101 he has managed for Surrey over the past two seasons.

His absence gives either Shah, or more likely the more versatile Bopara, a chance to fill the No 6 place left vacant by the convalescent Flintoff. Matt Prior is retained as first-choice batsman-wicketkeeper but knows that he must blunt his tongue and sharpen his footwork if he is to keep “Colonel” Mustard waiting in the ballroom.

Tour party and dates

England squad M P Vaughan (Yorkshire, captain) 70 caps; J M Anderson (Lancashire) 19; I R Bell (Warwickshire) 30; R S Bopara (Essex) 0; S C J Broad (Nottinghamshire) 0; P D Collingwood (Durham) 27; A N Cook (Essex) 21; M J Hoggard (Yorkshire) 64; P Mustard (Durham) 0; M S Panesar (Northamptonshire) 20; K P Pietersen (Hampshire) 30; M J Prior (Sussex) 7; O A Shah (Middlesex) 2; R J Sidebottom (Nottinghamshire) 7; G P Swann (Nottinghamshire) 0. Subject to proving fitness: S J Harmison (Durham) 54.

Itinerary

Nov 20-22: First warm-up match (Colombo CC).

Nov 25-27: Second warm-up match (Colombo Colts CC).

Dec 1-5: First Test (Kandy).

Dec 9-13: Second Test (Colombo). Dec 18-22:

Third Test (Galle).

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