Lamest of Ducks Will Test Selectors' Faith in Their Middle Disorder

"Form," said Ed Smith during his golden run in 2003, "is capricious", which was a fancy way of saying what Ian Bell and Paul Collingwood would probably express in earthier terms right now. Yesterday the hope was that England's two middle-order strugglers would build on the tentative stand of 46 that sealed victory in the second Test at Old Trafford. Instead, they faced seven balls between them and contributed no runs. Sandwiched by Kevin Pietersen's 115 and Tim Ambrose's 67, their ducks felt more like sore thumbs.

Two days ago Geoff Miller summed up the mood around England's selection table when he spoke of creating "stability but not a comfort zone". Since Ravi Bopara was busy in the background making a brisk double hundred for Essex, he was choosing his words carefully. But each failure from batsmen with so much invested in them - Bell the textbook prodigy, Collingwood the one-day captain - places a sensible ethos under fresh scrutiny. The door on which Miller said Bopara was banging is loosening at the hinges.

With the might of South Africa, India and Australia all on the horizon this is precisely the scenario the selectors dread, but the evidence for the prosecution is mounting. Either side of the sweet century Bell coaxed out of Napier's featherbed in March have been 185 runs in nine innings, all against New Zealand, at an average of 26. Collingwood has 32 runs in four knocks in this series and a first-class average this summer of seven. The worrying truth is that neither failure yesterday came as a great shock.

Bell virtually gave himself out after playing around his third delivery from Iain O'Brien when the dismissal of Andrew Strauss in the previous over, the first after lunch, demanded a straighter bat. And if Collingwood got a good one from Kyle Mills a few balls later, his poke to slip did little to contradict Duncan Fletcher's recent observation that he suffers from hard hands.

In that respect the two demises had a familiar ring. Bell must be sick of hearing that he is the more gifted player, but he is unable to shake off the accusation that he makes the wrong decision at the wrong moment. Presumably Collingwood is equally fed up with being pigeonholed as the grafter who is cheerfully honest about his technical limitations, a player strong-minded enough to skip Durham's championship match against Sussex last week to work on his game with England's batting coach Andy Flower.

None of which actually helps Miller and his colleagues decide whether to stick or twist. The pick-and-mix approach of the 1990s has given way to an environment in which the selectors are prepared to take the blame rather than buck-pass it to the players, but the line between loyalty and stubbornness can be impossibly fine, and England are in danger of treading it.

The question is, could others do any better? Bopara's double hundred came in a form of the game in which his England credentials are not in much doubt, although an eye-catching NatWest Series could yet do for his Test prospects what Pietersen's one-day heroics against Australia three years ago did for his. Owais Shah, viewed with suspicion by the previous regime, seems fated to play the role of nearly man, and Rob Key's 15-Test career, on hold since January 2005, has so far brought him an average of 31. Mark Ramprakash remains a glint in the romantics' eye.

Pietersen himself was in little doubt. "It is obviously a struggle but I saw something on Sky where they gave a list of the top run-scorers in county cricket at the moment and none of those guys are better than Ian Bell or Paul Collingwood," he said. "Not one of them can touch them.

"It is just a matter of time. The cycle of life has it that you are going to have good days and bad days and, unfortunately, they are missing out at the moment. But Bell scored a hundred three games ago and Collingwood is an important member of our team. It is only a matter of time. The positives are what people should be talking about." They should be, but they aren't. The second innings here could be crunch time.