MARK BUTCHER’S tour of South Africa is over and very likely his colourful, characterful Test career, too. It may be greatly to the advantage of Surrey that their new captain, centrally contracted though he will be until September, is likely to be available to them for the majority of next season’s matches, but Butcher, naturally, was disconsolate yesterday about the prospect of a return home tomorrow after consulting a local specialist about damaged ligaments in his left wrist.

Robert Key probably would have remained in the Test side anyway after taking Butcher’s place when the injury, first sustained in the gym, became increasingly painful just before the Cape Town Test. Ian Bell, the next in line and a member of the one-day group due here next Monday, will fly out today to cover in case of further mishaps.

Bell said yesterday: “I’ve got a day to get myself ready. I’ve been ticking along in England. It’s not that long since the matches against Zimbabwe and I hope I’ll be ready and can get myself in some form. It’s quite tricky at that level. The intensity takes it out of your body. That’s why we need a strong squad.”

It is history repeated for both Butcher and Bell because the young Warwickshire batsman, now 22, then only 19, was flown out to Wellington in March 2002 after Butcher had suffered a hairline fracture of a thumb before the second Test against New Zealand. Well aware of the dangers of relinquishing his place, Butcher played in the second Test only because the match did not start until early on the second afternoon because of rain.

Providence decreed that he would play 42 Tests in succession before everything went wrong for him early last season. Whiplash, when a car shunted his from behind, and a thigh injury suffered when he was moving boxes at his new home in South London, followed a scare in Jamaica last spring when he almost missed the first Test after spraining an ankle in bizarre fashion in the field.

The popular “Butch” could always be depended upon for some early-tour drama, but on none of these occasions did it seem that his longer-term Test career was threatened. This time it does. It is always dangerous to write off a player determined to get back — remember Darren Gough — but since the tour of West Indies, Key, Andrew Strauss and Bell have all come into the team and done well.

Unlucky to leave the side in these circumstances, it now looks as if Butcher, after 71 Tests and at the age of 32, will have to be lucky, or in beguilingly good form, to force his way back for a last series against Australia. Three of his eight centuries have been scored against the strongest of all England’s opponents since his first appearance at Edgbaston in 1997.

England won that match, beat Australia again when he played his most glittering innings, 173 not out at Headingley in 2001, and yet again when he finished the last series in Australia on a high note with 124 at Sydney. Six of his eight centuries have been made in a winning cause, two of them against South Africa, but, unlike Graham Thorpe, his long-time colleague, he has seldom excelled for England overseas.

Thorpe has always been a better player of spin, so, with tours to India and Pakistan scheduled next winter, no one will want him to retire after the Ashes series this summer. Nonetheless, it must be likely that, once Australia have been and gone, each of the experienced middle-order triumvirate that batted with such grit in the Caribbean, starting with Nasser Hussain, will have passed on the baton. In Butcher’s case, reluctantly so.

“I was pretty despondent about the injuries last summer but this is much worse,” Butcher said after the decision had been taken by Duncan Fletcher, the coach, during England’s net practice at The Wanderers yesterday, after a brief and painful attempt to bat against tennis balls. “Given another week or so, the wrist would probably be fine but the Centurion Test follows hard on the heels of this one so we haven’t got a week. With the sort of scheduling now, if you aren’t involved in the Tests there is no other cricket in between to get yourself into form.”

Butcher’s soulful side is displayed in the songs he writes for his own guitar accompaniment, but he has always had an engaging spark of humour, and it surfaced when he added: “I shall just have to wait in the ranks in county cricket like everybody else, I guess. The one bonus is that people tend to fall over dead when the Aussies are coming, so I’ll probably be in with a shout.”

He even saw the funny side of hurting the wrist when doing “tricep dips” in the gym, seldom as attractive as the hotel bar for much of his career. But the bon viveur has buckled down to making the most of his talent in the past few years of a Test career that earned him 15 wickets, 61 catches, 4,288 runs at 34 and much affection from cricketers everywhere.