SEASONED county cricketers will have noted the selection of the 29-year-old Ryan Sidebottom for the second Test against the West Indies with more than a passing interest. Was his call-up one of those "horses for courses" selections peculiar to Headingley or is Peter Moores' brave new world more prepared to use county championship form as a guide to picking players?

If the latter is the case, where does that leave Mark Ramprakash, the most prolific batsman of his generation, who is getting better with every passing year? The winner of both the PCA Players' Player of the Year Award for 2006 and BBC's Strictly Come Dancing shows no sign of slowing down despite his 37 years, and few in the county game would bet against him being the leading domestic run-scorer for each of the next three summers, which would take him beyond the next Ashes series.

Under Duncan Fletcher, England would have considered going back to Ramprakash a retrograde step. Could Moores, though, be of the opinion that a batsman as peerless as Ramprakash at county level might have made the necessary adjustments to fulfil his destiny on the bigger stage?

Ramprakash has, of course, had a fair crack at international cricket without delivering consistently. A Test average of just over 27 from 92 Test match innings is the not the stuff of which legends are made. Yes, he had a tough baptism against a good West Indies side in 1991, but his early innings seemed to shape his approach to Test cricket. He looked to be fighting so hard to avoid making mistakes that he stifled his own natural flair. Who can forget his harrowing stand at Lord's in 1995 having nicked Ian Bishop to slip in the second innings to bag a pair? A personification of dejection and disbelief he eventually turned to exit his home stage and make the longest walk in cricket. A trap door would have been more appropriate.

Since he last wore the three lions in Auckland against New Zealand a shade over five years ago (March 2002), he has dedicated himself to scoring runs for Surrey, his adopted county. The more distant his prospects of re-kindling an international career have become, the more at ease he has been churning out runs at county level. Technically, Ramprakash is the same compact, textbook stroke-maker he has always been. Mentally, though, he appears in a very different place. The angst and desperate desire to succeed has been replaced by the relaxed confidence of a man at one with his work. He used to opt for the percentages, play within himself but now he is more prepared to express himself and do full justice to his rare abilities.

He scored 2278 championship runs from just 23 championship innings in 2006. His average of 103.54 has been surpassed only by Don Bradman (115.66 in 1938) among those scoring 1000 runs in a season, while his feats of scoring 2000 runs in just 20 innings and scores of at least 150 in five consecutive matches are both world records. Those who said he'd struggle to produce the same kind of form in the first division should be eating their words as this summer he has notched 676 runs at an average of 135.2 with four hundreds including 266 not out against Sussex, the county champions, last week. Three days later he came out in a day/night trophy match and smashed the same opposition for 142 not out.

Mark Ramprakash is by some distance the best batsman in the country. Chances are that he will remain unfulfilled as an international cricketer. He has almost certainly resigned himself to this fate and moved on. There are romantics within game, however - and I count myself among them as someone who advocated taking him to Australia this winter - that believe he has earned the right to have one last crack at the big time and show the cricketing world what he's really all about. Hopefully Peter Moores shares that view.