Give Vaughan the players and watch him make the world of difference

Michael Vaughan may have realised in the past few days how captains of village cricket teams feel most weeks. Never mind winning or losing, the primary task is to get 11 men on to the field.

Vaughan will become the 24th captain of England's one-day team during assorted competitions next month. None of his predecessors can have started with a canvas quite so blank. In essence, he will be a new leader in charge of a new side.

Of the 11 players who were so cruelly defeated by Australia in the World Cup, five are unavailable because of retirement or injury, another has retired in all but name. It will not quite be a case of making desperate phone calls to half-forgotten mates to ask if the wife will let them play and urging them to fetch their kit from the loft. But it is the international equivalent.

Vaughan, of course, will not be doing his own ringing round. That will be left to the newly constituted selection panel consisting of David Graveney, beginning his seventh year as chairman; Duncan Fletcher, coach; Geoff Miller; and the Australian head of the National Academy, Rodney Marsh. Odd to think that only one of the quartet has played Test cricket for England and that sound they hear during their deliberations will be Lord Hawke turning in his grave.

Since Nasser Hussain, now captain of the Test team only, relinquished his selectorial role, it was hardly appropriate to allow Vaughan a formal voice. He will get what he is given. In his understated way, he gave the selectors a prod at Lord's last week when he was unveiled before a completely suspecting world.

"In 1992 we were so close to winning the World Cup but since then we have played in three tournaments and haven't played to our potential," he said. He had it in a nutshell. What matters in one-day cricket is the World Cup.

All the one-off series, triangular and quadrangular tournaments can provide ripping entertainment and a place or two up or down the world rankings. But all of them should be geared to one aim, in the present case the World Cup in the West Indies in 2007. Vaughan has grasped that. Previous selection panels appeared to have done so only to be blown off course.

The ideal scenario will be for Vaughan to take the team to the Caribbean but so much can happen in four years that this may be a pipe-dream. He will certainly want the squad with which he goes into the fray this summer – for a bizarre programme which involves a one-off series against Pakistan followed by a triangular tournament featuring Zimbabwe and South Africa – to be chosen with the long term in mind.

Nobody should anticipate that the 14 or 15 men who play this summer will all be regrouping in Barbados but that should be the plan. It will be a fraught procedure and a true test of the art of selection. Graveney and his colleagues will have to choose perhaps seven players new to the international arena.

Life will be slightly more difficult because of the number of people ineligible to play, not because their wives refuse to sanction it, but because they are not English. County cricket is at present replete with overseas professionals (possibly a good thing) and those who are qualified by virtue of parentage or a European Union passport (possibly not a good thing).

Those who would see nothing wrong in the system point to the fact that there are 18 counties and therefore there are still plenty to look at. But the other day Northants fielded a team in which five men were unqualified to play for England because of where they were born (several others were because of talent). This does not seem entirely sensible. Australia seem to set the benchmark in all things cricketing and while they may not always be right you would not catch them stocking their state sides with non-Australians.

Vaughan is unlikely to be affected much by this. He is so laid-back and comfortable a character that you almost expected him to fall off the dais on which he was speaking after his elevation last week. He made no bold claims. His captaincy experience, he pointed out, was limited to England Under-19s and England A where he was popular and successful. Laid-back does not mean lazy.

"I will be speaking to Nasser and other players who have captained England like Mike Atherton," he said. "I want their opinions on how to go about it. I'm really excited about doing it but I know there will be off-days and stages where I'm not scoring runs."

There was the rub. Over the past year, Vaughan has become routinely if excitingly associated with scoring runs, lots of them in high style. The worry is that the captaincy will somehow deprive him of this power. True, he will have plenty to think about but actually it goes further than that.

Vaughan may be the No 1-ranked Test batsman in the world thanks to his 1,533 runs in 22 innings since the start of the 2002 summer but he is not in the top 20 in one-day terms. He has played only 26 one-dayers, he has a top score of 63. He is a novice. He knows it too.

It should not matter. He is the best batsman now, and it will be only a matter of time before he scores plenty. There is a long tradition in making the best player captain. He is only the second man to be named specifically as one-day captain. The first, Adam Hollioake, was perhaps unfairly treated, from God to fallen idol in a trice.

There was a case for bringing back Hollioake as skipper now as a strong leader and a good enough player whose perspective has changed since the death of his brother Ben. But Vaughan is a sound choice who will deal more phlegmatically with the splitting of the captaincy roles. He and Hussain are buddies.

This summer will tell us much about whether dividing the spoils of captaincy works. But first they have to find Vaughan his team.