Last week Brian Ashton was depicted as a draconian coach; now he takes on the mantle of iconoclast. Not that Jonny Wilkinson's international career is over after his omission from the England team who will start against Ireland at Twickenham on Saturday, indeed it would be of a piece with the events of the past week if he came off the bench and proved his country's saviour.

So dedicated a player as Wilkinson has every chance of restoration. He is only 28, he has the experience of 69 caps, three World Cups and two Lions tours behind him and his value to England remains immense. His standing in the game, as the man who kicked the winning dropped goal in the 2003 World Cup final, as the international game's world-record points scorer - as the leading points scorer in this RBS Six Nations Championship - remains extraordinarily high.

With Wilkinson it is a question of desire. He has always said that he seeks to be the best he can be and still does; maybe he achieved that by the time he was 24 and his hour has now passed. Yet to bear the brunt of the blame for so lifeless a team display as England turned in against Scotland at Murrayfield last Saturday is harsh in the extreme when the form he showed was, in part, determined by the underachievement of others.

On the face of it, however, England considered only one other change, on the left wing, where James Simpson-Daniel was a serious candidate to replace his Gloucester colleague, Lesley Vainikolo.

Simpson-Daniel's luck, yet again, deserted him: he picked up an ankle injury last weekend that would have prevented him from training until Friday and, having been added to the squad only last week, it was considered too late to make him an option, as opposed to James Haskell, who, similarly, will not train until Friday while his own ankle recovers but nonetheless appears as the back-row replacement because he has been part of the squad for the entire Six Nations.

Ashton, the head coach, said that the variety in England's lineout against Scotland was the best it had been throughout this championship, that the scrummage was sound and the pack, therefore, was selected en bloc. Given his criticism of Wilkinson's tactical kicking, it becomes clear, therefore, that the fly half was considered the most faulty part of the 15-9 defeat.

His game management this year has been less than England required against Wales and Scotland. Even in his palmy days, Wilkinson found comfort in the presence of Mike Catt or Will Greenwood in the midfield triangle, most notably in the 2003 World Cup quarter-final against Wales; how instructive it would have been to watch his captaincy of England after it was offered to him by Andy Robinson, then the head coach, late in 2004, an offer that injury prevented him accepting.

But the queue of younger pretenders is growing, never mind the ability of Charlie Hodgson, who, having made a cameo appearance at Murrayfield, now has no place in the match squad. Toby Flood (still recovering from the shin injury that forced him off last Saturday) and Olly Barkley have already played fly half for England, Shane Geraghty and Ryan Lamb are capable of doing so, but on Saturday Danny Cipriani takes over and, if everything predicted for the young Wasps player comes true, he will be hard to dislodge.

Ashton first witnessed his precocious skills in an under-15 schools cup final; a year later, aged only 15, he was at the head of his peer group in the RFU's national academy. “It doesn't surprise me he has developed as well as he has,” Ashton said. “I'm fully confident he can take the on-field responsibility, he can take decisions as the game moves around the field, he's pretty authoritative when he talks, he talks early and loudly.”

Cipriani could have displaced Iain Balshaw at full back, as he would have done against Scotland but for his midweek indiscretions, but Ashton perceived Balshaw as one of the better players against Scotland, hence Cipriani's arrival at fly half. “I feel Danny's developed and matured as a player over the last 12 months, he's ready now to set foot on an international field,” Ashton said.

England team

I Balshaw (Gloucester); P Sackey (London Wasps), J Noon (Newcastle Falcons), T Flood (Newcastle Falcons), L Vainikolo (Gloucester); D Cipriani (London Wasps), R Wigglesworth (Sale Sharks); A Sheridan (Sale Sharks), L Mears (Bath), P Vickery (London Wasps, captain), S Shaw (London Wasps), S Borthwick (Bath), T Croft (Leicester), M Lipman (Bath), N Easter (Harlequins). Replacements: G Chuter (Leicester), M Stevens (Bath), B Kay (Leicester), J Haskell (London Wasps), P Hodgson (London Irish), J Wilkinson (Newcastle Falcons), M Tait (Newcastle Falcons).

Ireland: G Murphy (Leicester); T Bowe (Ulster), A Trimble (Ulster), S Horgan (Leinster), R Kearney (Leinster); R O'Gara (Munster, captain), E Reddan (London Wasps); M Horan (Munster), R Best (Ulster), J Hayes (Munster), D O'Callaghan (Munster), P O'Connell (Munster), D Leamy (Munster), D Wallace (Munster), J Heaslip (Leinster). Replacements: B Jackman (Leinster), T Buckley (Munster), M O'Driscoll (Munster), S Easterby (Llanelli Scarlets), P Stringer (Munster), P Wallace (Ulster), L Fitzgerald (Leinster).

Referee: S Dickinson (Australia).

Meteoric rise

Danny Cipriani was born in November 1987. He grew up the only child in a single-parent family on an estate in Putney, southwest London after his father, Jay, split from his mother, Anne, and returned to Trinidad & Tobago.

He started rugby at the age of 9 and joined Rosslyn Park, where he played until under-15 level. He went to Donhead school and his mother, a black-cab driver, saved to send him to The Oratory School, near Reading. He then went to Whitgift School, Croydon.

He captained England Under-16 and made his London Wasps debut soon after his seventeenth birthday, in the Powergen Cup against Bristol on December 19, 2004, the youngest debutant in English senior rugby at the time. He made his Premiership debut for Wasps against Bath on November 2006, scoring their only try. His England debut came off the bench against Wales this season.

He lists his sporting heroes as Christian Cullen, Jonny Wilkinson, Brian Lara and Alex King, the former Wasps fly half, but always names Cullen, the former All Black full back, as his favourite.

Words by Matthew Pryor