Stewart named England one-day team captain

By Ted Corbett

LONDON, MAY 25. Despite the Condon report, which announced that he would be interviewed for a second time about allegations that he had received money from the Indian bookmaker Mukesh Gupta during the 1993 tour, Alec Stewart has been named captain of the England one-day side for the triangular tournament against Pakistan and Australia next month.

Stewart, who competed with Graham Thorpe for the job in the absence of the injured Nasser Hussain, denies he took money and Lord MacLaurin, Chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, has said there is no evidence against him.

He has also been named as captain for the second Test against Pakistan at Old Trafford next week and this decision has brought a storm of criticism. The ECB has been described as ``soft and arrogant'' because it has not acted against Stewart.

Tim Lamb, the Board's chief executive, defended the decision by saying: ``as far as we are concerned he is innocent pending any further evidence. It's a question of natural justice.

People tell us that a policeman or schoolteacher in a similar situation would be suspended on full pay until the matter was investigated but we believe it is entirely appropriate for Alec to continue playing.''

It is true, as Lamb says, that ECB is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't; but the Stewart decision, plus its failure to set up its own inquiry into the allegations about fixed county matches in the last 30 years has, not surprisingly, brought it into the firing line.

It has kept faith in Stewart, knowing that the extra pressure from the Condon report may affect his duties as batsman, wicket- keeper and captain at some stage of the three-week competition.

The rest of the 14-man one-day squad is predictable even if Ali Brown, Dominic Cork, Ben Hollioake and Nick Knight return. Brown's fierce hitting, Cork's all-round aggression, Hollioake's natural ability and Knight's one-day international average of 44 will all help to boost the performances of a side which lost five of six internationals this winter. Oddly, Andrew Flintoff, whose stroke-play brought its only victory, is omitted.

The surprise comes from Durham, the most junior county, whose all-rounder Paul Collingwood scored the first century of the new season. He heads the first-class averages with 554 runs at 69.25 with a top score of 153 against Warwickshire and his one-day average is 66.20 from 331 runs in seven matches and a best of 95 not out against Leicestershire.

He may get a chance to show off his strokes and his medium pace bowling to the Tynesiders who have filled the Riverside ground enthusiastically for the last 10 years. He is 25 and was on the books of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire before returning to the county of his birth.

Graeme Hick is left out, a sign the selectors have one eye on the World Cup in under two years, after a series of failures in Sri Lanka.

It may be the end of the road for Hick, now 35, but still scoring as fluently as ever for Worcestershire and more likely than Collinwood to step into the Test side if Hussain's injury time out is prolonged.

The squad: Alec Stewart (captain), Alistair Brown, Andrew Caddick, Paul Collingwood, Dominic Cork, Robert Croft, Mark Ealham, Darren Gough, Ben Hollioake, Nick Knight, Alan Mullally, Graham Thorpe, Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan.

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