A FEW weeks ago, when Martin Bicknell was not taking wickets for Surrey with his usual regularity, a cricket writer (all right, it was this one) ventured to suggest that only he would know whether it was a temporary blip or he was beginning to feel his years.

“Oi!” he called out indignantly the next morning from his fielding position at deep fine leg, where he had abandoned his familiar guardsman’s gait for the stooping walk of an old man as if he were suffering from the effects of bowling for the best part of 18 years. “What’s all this about me getting old?”

He was to answer his own question. “I do know,” he said the other day after he had proved that it was only a blip by resuming his normal wicket-taking service, but the years must still have fallen off him when he woke from an afternoon nap to discover that he had been called into the England squad for the fourth npower Test against South Africa at Headingley tomorrow.

Bicknell is 34 and even he thought that his chances of adding to the two England caps he won ten years ago had gone when the selectors repeatedly refused to recognise that he was the most consistent fast-medium bowler in the land.

“I did get frustrated with the whole thing because there was a time two or three years ago when my name seemed to be linked with England every other Test,” he said. “Maybe this is the best way — to be called up completely out of the blue.

“It’s the last thing I thought would happen, but when the call comes you don’t turn it down. It’s just too good an opportunity to miss. The chance to play for my country is something I’ve been striving for throughout my career.”

His first opportunity also came at Headingley, but, after a traumatic debut against Australia, when his one wicket cost 155 runs, and one more Test at Edgbaston, he lost his place at the Oval because of a knee injury and has not been picked since.

The main reason was that the selectors believed that he was short of pace at the highest level, which explains why he will be more frightened of the speed gun than the South Africa batsmen if he plays tomorrow. “I’m not going to blow anyone away with pace, but I know what I can do and so do England,” he said. “It’s hard for me to say how well I’m bowling, but I’m confident I’ll do a good job if I get the chance.”

Whether he gets that chance will depend first on the fitness of Steve Harmison, who had a painkilling injection yesterday to improve his chances of recovering from a calf injury, and, second, on the state of the pitch, which could persuade the selectors to include Bicknell and Kabir Ali, the Worcestershire tyro who has also been called into the squad, at the expense of Ashley Giles.

Andy Fogarty, the groundsman, was not about to tempt fate by talking about how the pitch might play. All he would say was that the preparation had gone well, but he knows as well as anyone that the way the ball behaves at Headingley depends more on the clouds above than the surface below.

South Africa are hoping that Gary Kirsten has shaken off an elbow injury to return to the team, probably at the expense of Boeta Dippenaar, and are expected to replace Shaun Pollock, who has flown home to attend the birth of his first child, with Dewald Pretorius.

Whoever plays, they will find Headingley buzzing after England’s victory at Trent Bridge to square the series. The ticket office has been inundated with calls, so much so that Yorkshire appealed to people to keep trying if they could not get through. More than 500 bookings were taken on the internet alone and the signs were that the ground would be filled to its 15,000 capacity on the first three days.