As is often the case with tortured questions, the answer was staring us in the face. It had been there almost from the beginning. Five autumns ago Wayne Rooney still slept in a room festooned with Everton pennants at his parents’ house in Croxteth and Coleen, his girlfriend, was in sixth form at school.

His only preoccupation outside football was the planning of his 18th birthday party (Aintree racecourse or the local pub?) when he went to Skopje to make his sixth appearance for England.

The home side led 1-0 at half-time with Rooney and his strike partner, Michael Owen, struggling to make an impact. So Sven-Göran Eriksson made a tactical change.

On came Emile Heskey, his physical presence forced back the Macedonians, suddenly there was space and Rooney became his country’s youngest scorer as England eased to victory. Rooney’s strike, a sweet first-time shot on the half-volley, resulted from Heskey’s headed pass.

It seemed unimaginable then, even more so when he scorched through Euro 2004 nine months later, that soon enough unlocking the talents of Rooney would become one of the puzzles of our age. England coaching boffins would stand in technical areas twiddling their spectacles, clipboards, notebooks and umbrellas, vainly pondering the equation as stasis gripped the team.

It turned out to be only a little more complicated than the basic sum of E = Rooney goals squared, where E, of course, is Emile. Until Skopje, September 2003, Owen and Heskey had been England’s strike partnership: the irony is that Rooney was seen as an improvement upon Heskey when really he was a superior option to Owen.

Not that any right-minded national manager would have subtracted the Owen of 2003, or indeed the Owen of any year between 1998 and 2005, but it is impossible to argue with the 2008 calculations of Fabio Capello. Leaving Owen in the margins, he started his first World Cup qualifier, in Andorra, by trying Rooney and Jermain Defoe together.

The score level at half-time, he chose the same formula Eriksson had all those years ago in Skopje. On came Heskey, the wheel turned full circle and Rooney, finally freed again, created a goal for Joe Cole and England had a victory. With Heskey beside him, Rooney continued improving against Croatia, Kazakhstan and, last Wednesday, Belarus. England scored 12 goals in those three games, 11 while Rooney was on the field. He was involved in nine of them.

The five he struck himself were as many as he had scored in his previous four years and three months of international football. It was not quite as simple as just restoring Heskey. Filling a range of roles for Manchester United has expanded Rooney’s football intelligence but stop swapping positions with Heskey and midfield and frontline where second contracted his striker’s instincts.

Capello has sought to revive these, nagging him despite a fine performance in Croatia for “not playing close enough to Heskey” and at half-time in Belarus instructing him to Steven Gerrard. Against Kazakhstan, Capello abandoned an attempt to station Rooney wide.

All of these decisions by the Italian have had the effect of forcing Rooney into the centrefield space between strikers do their best work. It has made him focus on his tandem with Heskey rather than succumbing to his admirable but self-destructive desire to link with every teammate on the pitch. “The big man is back,” Rooney bragged at the last World Cup. He was premature but can shout those words now.

When England get the best out of Rooney, you get the best out of England. In recasting Rooney as a second striker, Capello has abandoned the practice of using him as a lone forward, a three-in-one role where the exponent must be a ball-winner, counter-attacking outlet and finisher: now, instead of being a jack of all trades, Rooney is back to being the master of one.

Heskey is Capello’s ball-winner and Theo Walcott his go-to man on the break. Now that United have bought Dimitar Berbatov, Rooney can also perfect the No 10 role at his club. A spurt of further development beckons.

Extraordinarily, the cap won in Minsk was Rooney’s 48th. Geoff Hurst won only 49, Glenn Hoddle 53 and Paul Gascoigne 57. Rooney’s birthday, on Friday, is his 23rd.

Barring serious injury, he seems bound to break the England appearances record, and now expectations have been revived of him breaking the scoring record. Already 18th on the all-time list, his 19 strikes give him a goals-to-games ratio not much inferior to Owen’s, although Rooney does not take penalties, unlike Owen. Rooney has scored more international goals than Fernando Torres, despite having played fewer games.

Rooney is responding to Capello, an England boss, at last, with a persona similar to the managers – Sir Alex Ferguson and David Moyes – who have guided the player’s development at club level. The difference between Capello’s performance in England friendlies and competitive games is striking, and so is Rooney’s.

He has scored in 45% of his World Cup and European Championship matches but only 32% of his friendlies. This is someone who almost never practised keepy-ups as a boy “because you don’t do those in games”. Capello is similar, one of football’s brilliant pragmatists.

It would be fitting if Rooney reaches 50 caps in the friendly against Spain next February, a game that has still to be officially sanctioned. His international nadir came on England’s last visit to the country, when Eriksson had to substitute him to avert a sending-off, but now he is poised to expunge those memories by returning to reach an appearances milestone as a different player from the tantrum-thrower of his younger days.

A sign of how Capello has got him focused is that Rooney has been booked just once in eight outings under the Italian. The hype merchants have started up again. Nations across the world are trembling, apparently – “What, England beat Belarus and Kazakhstan!? We’ll never win the World Cup now,” as they are not saying in Rio, Rome and Berlin. Thankfully Capello is producing a culture in his squad in which such talk is squashed.

Only Rooney, among Englishmen, could have scored the second of his goals in Minsk with the use of three dummies, two of which saw defenders scattered by feints of his body and one seeing the goalkeeper gulled when Rooney “gave him the eyes”. “I think it’s the best I’ve ever played for England,” said Rooney. “I’m enjoying my football, getting on the ball and scoring and making goals.”

Happily, that was not a boast but a statement of fact.

Heskey and Rooney: the ideal double act:

Rooney/Emile Heskey Played 12, Rooney goals 8

Rooney/Michael Owen Played 23, Rooney goals 11

Rooney/Jermain Defoe Played 6, Rooney goals 0

Rooney/Peter Crouch Played 4, Rooney goals 0

Rooney/Andy Johnson Played 3, Rooney goals 1

Other partners(Darren Bent, Darius Vassell, Francis Jeffers: 1 match with each) Played 3, Rooney goals 0

Rooney as a lone striker Played 5, Rooney goals 0 * Totals include matches in which Rooney played with more than one partner, and one goal when Rooney, Heskey and Owen played in a three-man attack

HOW ROONEY COMPARES TO OTHER ENGLAND STRIKERS:

Gary Lineker Played 80, goals 48. He scored in 60% of his England appearances

Alan Shearer Played 63, goals 30 (48%)

Michael Owen Played 89, goals 40 (45%)

Rooney Played 48, goals 19 (40%)