The View from Row Z: Particle physics - it’s child’s play

RUMOUR has it that Swiss boffins have decided to put on hold plans to recreate conditions just after the big bang.

The £4billion experiment, intended to provide vital clues about the nature of the universe with the help of the world’s largest particle accelerator, was due to start in earnest next month.

But this weekend, instead of preparing to take those first tentative steps towards unified theory, the holy grail of science, the team working underground near Geneva were said to be pondering a different matter, of similar mind-twisting incomprehensibility: how the England cricket selectors came about picking their team for the second Test.

Firstly, there is the Darren Pattinson conundrum. The ‘Australian roof tiler’, as he shall now ever be known, didn’t bowl too badly as it turned out, certainly not when compared to a nonentity like Stuart Broad.

But the decision to plump for a bloke who has only played 12 first-class matches in his life, at the age of 29, defied logic then as it does now.

Firstly, it surely signalled the end of a distinguished England career for Matthew Hoggard. If you must bring in a swing bowler, why not one who knows the ground inside out, who is bowling perfectly adequately for his county, who has 248 Test wickets and who regularly has the opposition captain in his pocket? One for those with more brain capacity than me to figure out.

Mind you, the swing strategy was flawed in the first place. Despite the clichés — which the selectors appear to have swallowed wholesale — there isn’t much assistance for wobbly, military medium bowlers at Headingley any more.

In the last three Tests at the Leeds ground, England have racked up over 500 in each of their first innings. Wickets are tough to obtain and without pace and/or bounce, you are very much up against it.

Pattinson, who operates at around 80mph, was the wrong choice in every way and even his captain Michael Vaughan seemed very wary of throwing him the ball after an initially unthreatening three-over spell.

At his best, Andrew Flintoff has even the most well-set batsmen jumping around the crease.

But flogging him through 40 overs in an innings — partly as a result of the rank ineffectiveness elsewhere in the attack — certainly doesn’t enhance his threat. No wonder Simon Jones wasn’t picked if this is the workload expected from those returning from long injury absences.

Not plumping for the tall Chris Tremlett, or a resurgent Steve Harmison, to replace the injured Ryan Sidebottom was surely a poor move. As much as anything, it can’t help morale or confidence in the dressing room when you are left scratching your head over bowling choices.

Especially when the batting has also been weakened, with fumbling wicketkeeper Tim Ambrose bizarrely promoted up the order to six.

In a previous column I called for England coach Peter Moores to go. I don’t know if I feel the same way any more.

His tenure now seems so beyond rational understanding that I am starting to believe he may be some sort of Einstein-like genius, a visionary who is putting into operation a masterplan for world domination that is incomprehensible to mere mortals.

Either that, or a county-level coach hugely out of his depth. Like the scientists in Switzerland, we will have to just wait and see how things pan out.