When Shoaib Akhtar fractured Nasser Hussain's thumb in the first Test at Lord's in May, it was a perfect introduction to chaos theory.

Six weeks on, the England side that Hussain and the coach Duncan Fletcher had singlemindedly put together with the imperative of beating Australia has been fragmented, the ideal, for now, shattered.

No Graham Thorpe, the fulcrum of the batting; and no Michael Vaughan, who on his last outing made his maiden Test century.

A fit Ashley Giles - or fit enough anyway - was a bonus here yesterday but overall it seems a gloomy picture. Simple logic says so.

The Australians lost their last series in India but it involved three remarkable matches and they remain a formidable team, one of the best the game has seen.

So cocksure are they that they picked their final XI on Monday, to allow their players to focus properly and to let England stew on the fact.

Even if Hussain had all his first-choice players, the task of taking on these Australians would be immense.

Now it has taken on an altogether different dimension.

Yet the return of Hussain has already added authority to the squad. Yesterday he showed again that he has learned the art of man-management, of saying the right things even if he does not truly believe them.

He recognises that sometimes out of adversity comes a surprise. From what seems to be a mess, he is saying, may yet emerge new players who might not otherwise have been given the opportunity.

"Things have happened the past week or so to test us out," he said yesterday, "but we've picked a side that I'm fully behind and one to do well."

Hussain would like to lose the toss - and strongly suspects, therefore, that he will win it - for this is a hard Edgbaston pitch to read. Certainly it has a good even covering of live grass, which will assist the seamers and there was no cracking.

Hussain knows his batting line-up, which with the returning Mark Butcher at three, Ian Ward at five and Usman Afzaal at seven has inexperience sandwiching experience. For each of these three players there is a challenge.

Butcher, a former England captain let us not forget, made a century in Brisbane in the opening innings of the last Ashes tour but scored only 395 runs in 23 subsequent innings before being dropped at the start of last season.

Ward, for his part, needs to consolidate on the good early impression he made against Pakistan, and Afzaal, if he has not already done so, should be reminded that Thorpe managed a debut century against these same opponents, so it can be done.

The only selection concern is the balance of the attack, and here Hussain is tending towards including Giles at the expense of Dominic Cork.

Giles instead of Cork might be a mistake and it is a fair bet that, with the prospect of bad weather interfering with the game, Australia will put England in should they win the toss.