Tudor's injury gives England the chance to blood youngsters

Selectors must avoid temptation to turn to same old faces for first Test at Lord's as Surrey bowler joins growing casualty list

On the eve of announcing their side for the first Test against India at Lord's, the England selectors have been dealt further bad news. Following Wednesday's withdrawal of Marcus Trescothick, with a fractured thumb, and Andrew Caddick, with a rib injury, Alex Tudor yesterday added his name to the growing list of casualties who will be unfit to take the field next Thursday.

Tudor, the Surrey fast bowler who won the man of the match award in England's last Test match against Sri Lanka at Old Trafford, has been complaining of sore shins since his return from the one-day triangular series. And while Tudor is making progress, the Surrey physiotherapist does not feel he will be fit enough to play in next week's Test match. This information has been passed on to the England physiotherapist, Dean Conway, who must fear the worst every time his telephone rings. Conway will then have given the unwelcome news to the selectors.

Tudor's county coach, Keith Medlycott, who had earlier denied rumours of a rift between Surrey and the England selectors over the county's decision not to play Graham Thorpe in the current round of Championship matches, said: "Alex can't put enough weight on his foot to walk, let alone bowl, and we have passed on our assessment to the England physio. It is a shame because the injury is healing but not as quickly as we all would have liked. We expect it to take a couple of weeks before he is back to full fitness."

Such news will have put a further spanner in the planning of the England selectors as they ponder which direction to take before this crucial Test match. Against an in-form and confident Indian side their biggest dilemma is whether to use these matches as a chance to introduce a couple of young players into the side, or go back to the favoured safety valves of Dominic Cork, Mark Ramprakash, John Crawley or Craig White.

Any captain/coach should be aware of the importance of bringing young players into the side when they can so that the transition from one team into the next appears seamless. This has been achieved in the last couple of years with the introduction of Trescothick, Michael Vaughan, Andrew Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard.

If these openings are continually used to bring back players aged over 30 – England could possibly pick a side for the first Test that contains only one player under 25, Flintoff – the team will eventually be left with a scenario in which all its experienced players get old together. They will retire at the same time and leave England with a raw, inexperienced group of players who will spend the following couple of years getting their collective backside kicked as they travel around the world.

As a player who came into the England side at the end of such an era, just when the rebel side went to South Africa, I find it impossible to overstate how hard it was to be in a team that was constantly being changed and struggling to win a series, whether at home or abroad.

It is inevitable that every now and then there is a periodwhen a generation of cricketers is overlooked. This happened in the Eighties and early Nineties when the likes of Botham, Gower, Gooch, Lamb, Gatting, Emburey, and Edmonds strutted their stuff. This was fair enough, though, because these were a high quality group of cricketers who won more than they lost, and deserved the long careers they had at the top.

However, the four likely replacements this week have nothing like the records of the aforementioned players, so when weighing up the options that are available to them, while accepting how important it is to win, it would be encouraging to see the selectors look further ahead than next week.