Cricket: England show faith in Pakistani Dane

Amjad Khan's appearance in the test match for England against the West Indies this weekend is extraordinary for at least four reasons.

First, he was born and brought up in Copenhagen and thus becomes the first Dane to play test cricket.

Secondly, he was not originally selected for this tour and has been preferred to two fast bowlers who were.

Thirdly, he has had to overcome a career-threatening injury which kept him out of cricket for 18 months.

Fourthly, he can thank New Zealander John Wright.

Apart from that, his selection was wholly predictable.

Although summoned to the Caribbean only as cover for the injured Andrew Flintoff, he has impressed sufficiently to persuade the selectors to jettison Stephen Harmison and Ryan Sidebottom.

That is a big decision by a new management team clearly unafraid to make big decisions.

Amjad has been in and around county cricket since 2001 and his progress has been both marked and noted. He has genuine pace - he was once clocked at 150km/h, which is seriously fast - and the ability to reverse swing the old ball.

His route to cricket was hardly conventional, simply because of where he comes from. The son of parents who had emigrated from Pakistan, there was only a peripheral interest in the game at home.

Amjad took to cricket at six when he saw a game being played on his way to football practice and asked to take part.

Subsequently he became, at 17, the youngest player to represent Denmark. He was clearly talented but a significant breakthrough came, as so

often in all lives, because of who he knew, not what he knew.

One of his mentors was Ole Mortensen, who had been the first Dane to play county cricket at Derbyshire.

One of Mortensen's team-mates had been New Zealander John Wright, who by 2000 had become coach of Kent. Mortensen recommended the kid to his old pal.

Amjad took 63 wickets in his first season, then regressed slightly. But by 2005, he was pinning back batsmen's ears. The following year, he gained British citizenship and was part of a select group practising at the Indian fast bowling academy in Chennai that winter.

There, he felt a twinge in his knee. Within weeks, he needed cruciate ligament surgery, missed the whole of the 2007 summer and did not fully return until last August.

He did enough to be picked for the England Lions this winter and when Flintoff was injured in the Caribbean, he was selected as cover. The rest may indeed be history.

However, the history that may be written from this match is the long, slow, march to a West Indies series win, their first in five years.

Within an over, perhaps before, the truth must have dawned on England. Another flat pitch, another five days of long, hard toil.

In truth, they can have expected nothing less at the Queen's Park Oval. From the very moment they won so astonishingly in Jamaica a month ago, the West Indies have been determined to protect their 1-0 lead in this series.

The match at Barbados was a pre-ordained draw and nothing much happened early on to suggest the final test will go a different way.

All the talk was of a sporting surface but that was always poppycock. Instead, a slow, lifeless track greeted the tourists.

The selection of the teams reflected exactly the state of the series. England, needing to win to bring them level at 1-1, were audacious bordering on reckless. They had to be.

West Indies, anxious for a draw to ensure their first test series win for five years, were conservative approaching inert. They had to be.

Both made changes aimed at either altering or maintaining the state of affairs.

England, as expected, played a five-man bowling attack, including two spinners and Khan as one of the three seamers.

The inclusion of both Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar provoked some scurrying to the records to check when England last played two spin bowlers in this age of pace and swing - actually five matches and two months ago in Mohali.

The West Indians chose seven batsmen and only three specialist bowlers. They are determined not to lose.

England need every attacking weapon at their disposal and at least have plenty of bowlers.

But to force the issue, they needed runs to match and captain Andrew Strauss, with 139 not out, provided at least some of them in a continuation of his purple patch, taking England to 258 for two at stumps.

He eked out runs. It was all that could be done. The ball simply was not coming on to the bat. From early in the piece, the West Indies posted fields whose primary purpose was not to attack.

Runs came at fewer than three an over and it was clear that attritional cricket was England's only opportunity, until and unless the pitch takes spin later in the match.

Strauss, who won the toss, batted through the day for his 17th test century. He hit 11 fours off 261 deliveries in just under six hours.

Paul Collingwood added 54 not out off 123 balls as he and his captain shared an unbroken partnership of 102 in the final session.

Strauss, who hit 169 and 142 in the previous two tests, was pleased with yet another three-figure score.

He said he was batting as well as he ever had in his 60 tests over the past five years - and that it was vital that he stretch his innings on day two and build another big England total.

"It's important to set the game up and not think about the end too early on," he said.

"With our batting line-up, it's important that the batsmen that are in take responsibility and we try and get a big score on the board."

England, through Strauss and Collingwood, dominated the final session as West Indies used part-timers Hinds, Nash and captain Chris Gayle for the majority of the overs.

Strauss, after surviving a television referral appeal for a leg before appeal on 95, brought up his century off 185 balls with a cover drive off his counterpart Gayle.

There were more woes for the home team when ace batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul limped off with a groin injury that threatened to hamper his participation in the rest of the match.

- INDEPENDENT