England had to wait the best part of 20 years to find the new Ian Botham - another Andrew Flintoff needs to hove into view rather sooner.

But the dearth of genuine all-rounders in county cricket mirrors their position at international level. With an ever-congested fixture list, they have become an endangered species. The presence of Jacques Kallis in the South Africa side this winter will only remind England of what they had in Flintoff. Yet Kallis has been able to stretch his career for as long as he has - 15 years and counting - by limiting his output with the ball. He has never needed to be the kingpin of the attack.

Kallis is on top of the Reliance Mobile ICC rankings for all-rounders, but most of the top ten - Flintoff is fourth - are better considered as either bowlers who bat, such as Mitchell Johnson, Daniel Vettori and Chaminda Vaas, second, third and fifth respectively, or batsmen who bowl, such as sixth-placed Chris Gayle. Other than Kallis and Flintoff, the only other genuine all-rounders are Dwayne Bravo, of West Indies, and Jacob Oram, of New Zealand..

Bravo missed the recent Test series against England because of serious ankle trouble, although he did manage to feature in the Indian Premier League. Oram is considering whether to follow Flintoff in stepping down from one format to prolong his career.

The most likely options for England are to call in an extra batsman at No6 - pushing down Matt Prior and relying on four bowlers plus a bit of Paul Collingwood in support - or promote Stuart Broad to No7 and hope that the recognised batsmen do their jobs a bit better than they managed at Cardiff in the first npower Test.

But do England really want to push Broad, 23, along this route? The idea that he ought to bat above Flintoff in the Ashes because his form has been better was always flawed because it meant heaping more responsibility on young shoulders.

Expecting runs from Broad, rather than hoping for them, would be a significant change of role.

Adil Rashid has credentials with bat and ball, but is yet to make his Test debut. If he were to feature as an all-rounder, rather than a spin bowler who bats, then he has two opportunities to make a mark. Unlike Broad, he has a pair of hundreds for his county, Yorkshire, behind him and was the leading spinner in England last year.

The problem for Rashid is that England aim to play a single spin bowler for most of the time, in most parts of the world. They will not have an occasion to play a pair in South Africa and had not used two together for a Test match at home since 1998, before Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar lined up at Cardiff last week.

In the film An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore introduces himself with the words: “I used to be the next president of the United States of America.” Political graveyards of Washington are full of buried ambitions, just as county cricket used to be full of those unfortunates - from Derek Pringle onwards - christened “the next Botham”.

The selectors know the difficulties only too well: Geoff Miller, their chairman, was briefly seen in that very light as an all-rounder himself. The danger now is picking someone who is not good enough as either a batsman or bowler, let alone both.

Tim Bresnan may just about make it, but only behind a pair of excellent wicket-takers.

Pringle made his Test debut in 1982 and it was not until roughly 2002 that Flintoff started to make an impact. Even Flintoff admitted yesterday that he was “rubbish” when he started as a 20-year-old in 1998. As for Pringle, he established himself not as an all-rounder but a frontline swing bowler and late-order clubber.

Rashid will be the brave option beyond Flintoff, picked ahead of Swann and Panesar and parachuted ahead of Broad at No7.Shane Warne is among those who thinks he is ready. At least, unlike the Pringles and David Capels of yesteryear, he could expect a decent run at a time of consistent selection.

He may just be worth it.