Geoff Miller's salary as national selector has not been disclosed. Being, by virtue of its title alone, a marginally more exposed responsibility than that borne by his longstanding predecessor, David Graveney - a mere chairman as far as the nomenclature was concerned - it is safe to assume that the affable “Dusty” earns more than a few bob extra. That, after all, is the way of the world in high-profile appointments. If the Bank of England is struggling to keep a lid on inflation, you may be certain that the ECB is, too.

After ten years following a policy of continuity as far as selecting the selectors was concerned, the governing body of cricket in England and Wales decided to bring the axe down on the neck of its durable chairman in January, handing what is more or less the same job to Miller, hitherto Graveney's low-profile right-hand man. Suddenly a very public figure, the incumbent must have felt that he earned a good chunk of his stipend yesterday.

Sometimes, as Tammy Wynette said of women, it's hard to be an England cricket supporter, but such is the continued inconsistency of the national team, it cannot be good for the nerves of those who select them.

Miller earned his corn yesterday not so much because England had one of their regular collapses, followed by one of their almost equally regular recoveries, but because he and his assistant selectors had decided to field the same XI for the fifth match running, despite having three batsmen out of form, one of four specialist bowlers, Stuart Broad, who is still learning his trade and another, James Anderson, who is struggling to find any consistency from game to game.

Sitting down to lunch with the journalists in one of the many dining-rooms in Trent Bridge's pristine Radcliffe Road Stand yesterday, Miller must have felt reasonably contented. Despite another failure by Alastair Cook, who has got to 50 only once in his past ten innings, and the all too insubstantial example set by Michael Vaughan, the captain, who had perished to a flowery stroke when disciplined bowling demanded respect, England were 84 for two. After being put in to bat by New Zealand, however dubiously, given that the sun was shining and that the ball will no doubt swing throughout the match, that was not a bad morning's work.

Imagine, then, the selectorial dyspepsia 20 minutes into the afternoon session. Andrew Strauss, having carefully reconstructed his game on the basis of safety-first batting and a determination not to be drawn out of the area close to his body, had embarked on a lavish shot at a wide offside ball in the first over after the interval. When two of the batsmen who might have been discarded because of a lack of form by a more ruthless national selector were out for ducks in the next two overs, the man in the hot seat must have been positively boiling, however impassive his outward demeanour.

Kevin Pietersen and Tim Ambrose allowed him to sit down to dinner last night with his appetite at least partially restored. The proof of the pudding, he might have said over the apple pie and ice-cream, is in the eating. If England prove to have scored a sufficiently large total to set up a fourth win in five Tests against New Zealand, the policy of continuity will have been vindicated.

That will depend, however, on how well they bowl, and it will have to be better than most of them batted yesterday. Paul Collingwood, in particular, needs to justify the faith shown in him by making some important runs in the second innings. His lack of footwork betrayed the absence of form or confidence. He went into this game with a first-class average of nine in three innings this season. Why he did not play for Durham against Sussex at Hove last weekend is a mystery. If it had anything at all to do with not over-taxing his sore right shoulder, he should not have been playing in this match, either.

Ian Bell, too, remains vulnerable in the short and the long term because, a little like Keith Fletcher in another era, he is a class batsman who too seldom shows it when it matters most, in the first innings. That is one small reason why, match after match, England make winning look harder than it should be. They are at their best when the situation looks bleak, as it did at Old Trafford, but if they are to regain the Ashes next year they have to begin to dominate.

The continuity policy, if it was right for now, may not be for much longer. Miller, Peter Moores, James Whitaker and Ashley Giles have shown great resolution to name an unchanged team for the fifth match in succession for the first time since 1884-85, but the logic of giving a young team a chance to settle down together could be flawed if, by the time Australia start the series next year, the XI of first choice includes such names as Andrew Flintoff, Simon Jones, Stephen Harmison, Ravi Bopara and, perhaps as a specialist batsman, Matt Prior.

Flintoff is unfit, Jones is feeling his way back and there are reasons for omitting Harmison, but form cannot simply be irrelevant. There is a skill in catching the tide, too. If Bopara is not playing against South Africa in England's next Test match, the selectors' resolution will have become stubbornness, which is a quite different thing.