Let's start with two telling moments from Sachin Tendulkar's superb 171 at Chelmsford on Saturday. First, on 39, he struggles to ride the bounce and clips uppishly in the direction of short fine leg, where Ravi Bopara just fails to hold on. Then, on 52, he makes the same mistake on the off-side, and an airborne poke is grassed by the diving Owais Shah at backward point. Why telling? Because the bowler on both occasions was Chris Tremlett, who is 6ft 7in and - when the mood takes him - a genuine handful.
This is not to suggest England were wrong to pick Stuart Broad ahead of Tremlett for Thursday's first-Test squad, especially as Tremlett was added to the mix yesterday following the withdrawal of Steve Harmison. But it is merely an illustration of how much they will miss Harmison at Lord's - and probably for the rest of the three-Test series as well. If the rumours of Tendulkar's increasing travails against hostile quick bowling are even half-true - and the two drops on Saturday suggest they might be - then he will be breathing an almighty sigh of relief that Harmison won't be there. And whatever Broad is, he isn't Harmy.
Isn't it ironic, as someone once sang, that after several months of questioning Harmison's mental strength, attitude and general ability to locate the cut strip, we are suddenly tut-tutting nervously at the prospect of his absence? (OK, so that's not actually ironic, but the first sentence wouldn't have worked if we'd said "weird".) But the truth is that with Andrew Flintoff out of action until the one-dayers at the earliest, Harmison was the one pace bowler on either side capable of making Lord's, Trent Bridge and The Oval look anything other than a batsman's paradise.
Recent evidence does not look good. In the last three Tests at Lord's England have failed to bowl the opposition out twice and have had to settle for draws in games they were bossing. At Trent Bridge last year they were spun to defeat by Muttiah Muralitharan, which means Monty Panesar is going to have be on top of his game to cancel out the threat of Anil Kumble. And at The Oval, England have achieved only one bona fide win against a decent side (South Africa in 2003) since they pulled off a consolation victory against Australia in 1997.
Even an out-of-form Harmison would have been worth a risk against India. The pity is, he was approaching something like his best form towards the end of the West Indies series, and the Surrey batsmen have been privately speaking in awe of his bowling for Durham in a championship match at The Oval recently. One of them described it as the quickest he had ever faced. More than that, Tendulkar is not the only Indian batsman who doesn't like it up him: Sourav Ganguly's hopeless flap at Tremlett on Saturday was a reminder that the short ball has never been to his liking either.
Still, let's not get too gloomy, eh? Because for all the promise and aggression shown by Shantha Sreesanth (apparently that is what we are now calling him), the Indian attack looks like being over-reliant on Kumble's slow-medium top-spinners. Don't get your money on a 0-0, because both sides can still be awfully brittle. But don't expect England and India to go to The Oval locked at 1-1 either.
This is an extract from Lawrence Booth's weekly email, The Spin
