What do you mean could have been? Ramprakash played 52 games for England and ended with a career average of 27.32 - do you think that's good enough after 52 matches? How many chances do you give someone to show what they can do before you give up and turn elsewhere?

Hussain played 96 matches and ended with an average of 37.16, 10 runs higher than Ramprakash and many would argue that any average for a middle order batsman under 40 isn't good enough!

Mark Ramprakash and John Crawley are both excellent County players who couldn't make the step up to Test Cricket and as I'm sure you're fully aware, International Test Cricket is played at a much higher level than County Cricket and just because you're good in County Cricket does not mean you'll also be good in Test Cricket, where temperament is the key.

It's not as if Ramps wasn't given enough chances either, despite the fact that those 52 games were played across a 2-3 year span, 52 games is almost a Test career within itself, with many Test players not reaching that number of games.

So how an earth can you claim that Butcher and Hussain would nver be the players Ramps was when both of them ended with much better averages than Ramprakash did? They did and were both better International Test players than Ramps and Crawley - the stats and history confirm that.

Just because you happen to prefer the batting style of Ramps and Crawley does not change what history and stats tell us I'm afraid.

I've got nothing against Ramps, I happen to think he's an excellent County level batsman who couldn't make the step up to the intensity and higher pressure game of International Cricket, that doesn't mean he's a bad batsman, it means he couldn't raise his game to the higher level.

This is exactly the problem I see in Moores, you applaud him for being more in touch with the County game and county players when we all know that to succeed in International Test Cricket requires a hell of a lot more than simply being a good County player as historic precedence tells us.

Moores can be in as close a contact with County players as he likes, if he doesn't possess the ability to determine which of those County players has the temperament and mental ability to make the step up to International Test Cricket - a level of the game Moores never even played in - then there's going to be a long procession of selected county players failing in the future - Bopara could well become the first victim as ODI is a different 'ball game' to Test Cricket if you'll excuse the pun.

This is where Fletcher was supreme and why many of his selections surprised people, he backed his hunches on players and having played International Cricket for Zimbabwe himself - he knew what qualities he was looking for. Trescothick (and Vaughan) is a classic example of the Fletcher 'hunch' - plucked out of county Cricket obscurity and inserted into the ODI side he was soon selected for the Test side and became one of the best opening batsmen this country has ever had.

Let's see if Moores can emulate that, somehow I very much doubt it.